


Mr. Benedict Goes to Winchester

by YellowShapedBox



Category: Death Note (Anime & Manga), The Mysterious Benedict Society - Trenton Lee Stewart
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Darker than Benedict, Gen, Lighter than Death Note, Power of Friendship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2020-08-23 20:54:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 31,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20220763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YellowShapedBox/pseuds/YellowShapedBox
Summary: After the affair of the abandoned prison, the Mysterious Benedict Society scarcely has a chance to settle down to business as unusual. Mr. Benedict has received an unsolicited job offer from one Roger Ruvie concerning a teaching situation at an orphanage for geniuses. In matters educational, it is the tallest order Benedict has ever had to fill, but his genius and his compassion render him uniquely suited, and Reynie and Constance shortly find themselves at home in the halls of Wammy's House. A good thing, too, for this sound decision of Mr. Ruvie's brings consequences no one could have foreseen...





	1. A Crucial Indiscretion

**Author's Note:**

> CANONICAL GROUND RULES: This fic was conceived as a follow-up to The Prisoner's Dilemma. It's rotten timing; as of this writing, the fourth mainline Benedict Society book is coming out within the month; but I have a hunch that the fourth book will be considerably less conclusive and conducive than the third, so I'd better start this now. So: The Mysterious Benedict Society, The Perilous Journey, The Prisoner's Dilemma and The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict are all canonical as far as this fic is concerned, while Riddle of Ages will be summarily ignored even though it's probably going to be good. 
> 
> As in the Benedict books themselves, this story will assume the reader is unfamiliar with the universe.
> 
> As to Death Note: unless and until AU conditions obtain, the anime and the manga are both canonical where possible, with a judgment call between them when they're not. With regard to LABB, A and B are canonical characters, but none of the things we learn about Mello are canonical, because the things we learn about Mello in LABB simply don't make any sense.
> 
> This story will assume the reader is familiar with Death Note.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The luxuriant peace of the Mysterious Benedict Society is disturbed by an unsolicited job offer from one Roger Ruvie.

Reynie Muldoon poured a little more bottled water into his hair at the last turning home. The air in Stonetown was as miserably hot as only August could make it, probably because it was still August. It didn't seem proper, somehow, for school to begin before the weather had turned halfway cool, but then going there for the past week _had_ seemed proper, and the time of year had no bearing on why it wasn't.

“All in all, I think the girls had the right of it,” he admitted.

Sticky Washington, who had been ever more painfully keeping himself from saying anything on their journey back, immediately nodded with vigor. He had been sweating a little, and not because of the muggy air. Sticky was all right in the heat; it was nerves that were his downfall, and Reynie's polite silence had inadvertently made him anxious that the experiment would go on.

There had been a logic to their return. After all, that they had ceased attending Stonetown Upper to go under the creatively hand-cobbled tutelage of Mr. Benedict and his staff had been not a choice but a security measure. Now that the security measure had outlived its purpose, it had seemed only natural to return to business as usual.

“How I ever could have come to regard the geologic slowness of that curriculum as _anything_ but an utter waste of time--” Sticky blurted.

“I don’t remember them being quite that nasty last time we tried,” Reynie put in, so that Sticky, who (being capable of pointing out all the errors and oversimplifications in the textbooks) had got the brunt of that nastiness, didn't have to.

“It's as though they held the Calhoun rat experiment with special focus on the effects of the pituitary gland!”

“And it can't even be deliberate,” said Reynie, who had seriously considered the possibility. “What use can that ugly _chaos_ be to anyone? Even the Institute...”

But even with its dark purpose discovered, its operators disbanded or incarcerated, its central machine destroyed, Curtain's Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened (L.I.V.E.) was not the sort of thing that ought to be mentioned over the course of ordinary bellyaching.

“There wasn't anything to solve, either, the whole week,” Reynie resumed after a brief and uncomfortable pause. “If I'd _asked _Ms. Calthorpe or Mr. Weil to set me something to solve, I don't think they'd have the faintest idea how to go about it. Never mind how many puzzles there really are in history, and science. There is Mr. Larsson, but...”

“But math isn't what you were looking for, either.” Sticky (who was, himself, perfectly content to solve difficult math problems) nodded owlishly as they turned their backs to the New House and entered the yard across the street. Of the many approaches to Mr. Benedict's house, it still felt odd at times to take the open and direct one. But that was where every teacher but Amma lived.

“Shame about those renovations to the central air. I could use an icebox for a basement right now.” Reynie mopped his brow on the front stoop as Sticky gave three good raps with the knocker.

No one came to the door.

“There must be a conference going on upstairs,” said Reynie. “Can't imagine why else Number Two wouldn't be here.”

Number Two, a severe woman whose wardrobe and complexion resembled nothing so much as an old-fashioned yellow pencil, had lately been freed from any necessity to act as Mr. Benedict's minder, and had promptly gone on to turn her attention toward minding the whole household.

Sticky said nothing, but scratched nervously above his ear where his glasses had once sat. The Benedict Society had seen more than its share of unannounced crisis.

They both turned in abrupt alarm at the sound of two feet hitting the pavement behind them.

“Look who's decided to pop in for the weekend!” It was Kate Wetherall, red bucket swinging, yellow hair distinctly windswept, and her face pink with the triumph of a task well done. The boys instinctively looked up and, sure enough, saw a rope's end dangling some four feet above their heads.

“Let me guess,” said Reynie, disappointed in his error. “Number Two wasn't answering the door on account of chasing after you.”

“If she were, she'd have caught me.” Kate blew some stray hairs away from her eyes. “Set ol' Pencilla to take care of someone--”

Sticky cleared his throat. “We, um, agreed. Not to give her grief about her name.”

“Ah, well, she can't hear us anyway,” said Kate blithely. “She's in a conference.”

Reynie smiled in relief. “What about?”

“You boys in the New House,” said Kate, shaking her head. “No idea what Constance and I have gone through since those renovations. Every possible way to eavesdrop on Mr. Benedict's office has been thought of, and worst of all? I asked Milligan if he was the one who did the thinking.” Milligan was Kate's long-lost father and probably knew eavesdropping tricks even Kate had never thought of.

“And?”

“He _didn't deny it! _So,” Kate concluded wistfully, “for want of a decent option, we've got to do the proper thing and wait for Mr. Benedict to tell us.” And, with a swift seamless motion involving a compartment in her bucket, she unlocked the house door.

Down the corridor toward the kitchen, Reynie saw perched on a counter something that didn't tally with the account as he understood it: one of Moocho Brazo's famous peach pies, freshly cooled and untouched although Moocho himself had turned his back to it. “Where _is _Constance?”

“That, I should have mentioned,” said Kate. “Search me, but she's at the conference in Mr. Benedict's office.”

That was perplexing indeed. Constance Contraire was incorrigible, a five-year-old girl possessed of phenomenal genius but perfectly typical five-year-old desires. To top it off, she had recently manifested telepathic gifts which (excepting her power of suggestion, which made her violently ill) she had no desire whatever to limit. Reynie could not conceive a reason Mr. Benedict would have Constance at a private meeting but shut Kate out.

“Anyway,” said Reynie, turning hastily away from the temptation of the pie, “we're not here because it's the weekend. We're letting everyone know we're here to stay, because the people here could lick any teacher the ninth grade at Stonetown Upper can muster.”

Kate whooped. “Knew you'd see reason in the end!” It would have been churlish to point out that Kate had come by this faculty of reason by way of spending her childhood as an acrobat in a traveling circus. “Come on, let's see Mr. Benedict. I'm dying to hear what the meeting is about, but you can say your piece first, it's short and sweet enough.”

* * *

As soon as Number Two opened the door, there was no more trouble in hearing what lay beyond. (An ordinary, hollow hardware-store door. And it occurred to Reynie that Mr. Benedict's office did need ventilation no matter what happened. He concluded that the anti-eavesdropping measures, though no doubt refined in scope, boiled down to one thing: Mr. Curtain's silencing technology.)

“...the opportunity is unparalleled,” Mr. Benedict was telling Constance, “and I have you to thank for it at least twice over. There is, at least, that.” He was dressed today in paisley mufti that made Reynie's head swim, but it was the seriousness of his demeanor that was worrisome.

It was further discomfort that Number Two, Milligan and Rhonda Kazembe made no motion to leave.

“Hey, Reynie!” called Constance over her shoulder before whipping back toward Mr. Benedict. “Dad, guess what! Reynie and Sticky have finally decided, after all these years!”

Mr. Benedict promptly put in a pair of earplugs, as had become his habit whenever his adoptive daughter elected to divulge facts that weren't hers to give.

She scowled at him, then shrugged and turned to the door with a conspiratorial smile, apparently deciding the next best thing was to tell Reynie and Sticky what she'd fished out of their minds.

“_Rules and schools are tools for fools_, right?”

Sticky smiled. “Referencing your early _oeuvre_, Constance?”

“_Constance Contraire: The Terrible Twos._” She grinned. “But the two-year-old poems were just so _short, _you could never make a book out of them. But my five-year-old poems are going to have a book with a _spine_. Guess what I'm on now?”

Reynie didn't have time to ask before he found the word _villanelles_ projected into his mind. 

“Sticky,” he sighed, “what's a villanelle?”

“A form of poetry I... can't really imagine in Constance's style,” said Sticky. “_Do not go gentle into that good night, _that's what a villanelle is.”

“Well,” said Constance, lifting her chin, “_my_ latest villanelle is centered the phrases _O, the painting is so tacky! _and _Only fit for used tabacky. _The form is flawless, so _you_ can't be a critic. And,” she added, looking even more conspiratorial than she had previously, “I need to tell you about the one after that. I didn’t mean for it to turn out this way when I chose, but it might actually have a _pun _on _vill--_”

“Constance,” said Number Two sharply.

“Children,” said Mr. Benedict. “Thank you for appearing so promptly; a rather urgent matter has just come up.” At some point in their exchange his earplugs had evidently come out, but his voice was still rather more forceful than necessary.

“Sorry,” whispered Constance, appearing genuinely abashed at whatever had run through Mr. Benedict's mind.

“Late last night,” announced Mr. Benedict, “while comforting Constance in her night terrors, I was telephoned with an unsolicited job offer, an offer on behalf of Quillsh Wammy.”

Heads turned automatically toward Sticky.

“Prolific inventor," Sticky obliged, "most notably of the Banana hardware and software system. He's also founded one hundred and seventy-two orphanages worldwide, or that was the figure in the 1999 article I happened to read.” He paused. “I'm... not sure which of these fields contains the job offer.”

“Wait,” interrupted Reynie. “Was Stonetown Orphanage one of the one hundred and seventy-two?” It had been a threadbare and lonely home to him, but it had been his home for most of his life.

“I have a shrewd idea not,” said Mr. Benedict, showing the first glimmer of his characteristic good humor. “You see, there was really only one possibility; the job offer _was_ for an orphanage.”

“You're a very fine inventor, sir,” said Sticky stolidly.

“I am flattered, Sticky, but I'm a tinkerer only. All the best invention I've ever managed, I owe to my brother. Who, incidentally, graciously accepted the same compliment when I visited him last week.”

“And when did Mr. Curtain ever say no to a compliment?” muttered Kate.

“Well, his yeses _have_ been considerably less gracious in the past.” Mr. Benedict cleared his throat by way of changing the subject. “I was asked, at any rate, to teach at an orphanage of Mr. Wammy's whose curriculum specializes in deduction. Forensics. Matters of criminal investigation generally.”

And Reynie understood at once why Stonetown Orphanage could not have been one of Wammy's. If he had ever once heard of such an orphanage, he would have known. In fact, he would have demanded a transfer at once and he would probably be there at this very moment. Of course, if he had, he would never have met Miss Perumal, much less been adopted as her son. He would never have applied for the Mysterious Benedict Society, never have met Sticky or Kate or Constance, and, he supposed, Mr. Curtain would probably have taken over the world. But now, there was no danger of any of those things happening, and... and wasn't he an orphan, adopted or not? He could see himself...

He saw Mr. Benedict smile understandingly in his direction.

“It was an ideal scenario in many ways, except one: it would necessarily entail my residing across international waters.”

Reynie felt a dull flush in his cheeks. His flight of fantasy had somehow missed out that he would be living, for the first time in three years, wholly apart from his friends.

“Alas, it was not my decision to make. You see, the headmaster, Mr. Ruvie, made the mistake of divulging certain sensitive details before I might make him aware of my newest daughter's abilities.”

“How many people _do_ you tell about my abilities?” demanded Constance. “Before they even ask?”

“Why, none whatsoever!” He broke at last into his familiar high-pitched dolphin barks of laughter. “But that indiscretion _did _ask for it, Constance, truly. And, children, this has put us all in a bind. Namely, I have no choice but to house Constance in Mr. Ruvie's orphanage. In other words, I could not, with any good sense, refrain from taking the position.”

Reynie cleared his throat. “Sticky and I were here because we'd just come to the conclusion that we would rather be taught by you than by anyone. And... a whole school of investigation? We're the Mysterious Benedict Society! It's simple. We _all_ get inducted.”

“There is a complication,” said Mr. Benedict gently. “Neither Sticky nor Kate is an orphan.”

“That's all right,” said Sticky quickly. “I'd actually rather _not_ solve crimes for the rest of my life. Ultimately, I think I'd like to be... sort of a one-man library.”

“That's called the Internet,” said Constance.

“The Internet has gaps and it's wrong a lot of the time, and it barely explains the roots or the reasons of _anything_. I'd do better.”

“Oh, I could see myself as an investigator,” said Kate, “or a vigilante hero, or a zookeeper or a ballet dancer or a magician or, oh, lots of things... but whatever it is, I'd better be learning about it pretty close to that orphanage.”

Milligan laughed. “Might have ripped the words straight from my head, Katie... only I wouldn't strike down _astronaut_ out of hand.”

“Agreed,” said Sticky. “I can do without mystery. But never _society_. And I'd rather not be too far removed from Benedict, if I could.”

“Didn't I tell you?” said Rhonda Kazembe with an impish grin.

Mr. Benedict covered his mouth, plainly bowled over by the mass compliment.

And by the time the sun rose again on England (unfortunately, that was the deepest watch of the night in Stonetown, but then suppertime had been reserved for pies and melons and special fizzed cider in the courtyard), Mr. Benedict and Constance, Rhonda Kazembe and Number Two, Sticky and the Washingtons, Kate and Milligan and Moocho Brazos, and Reynie and Miss Perumal and her mother, were all making arrangements with Roger Ruvie for residence in Winchester.

It was only then that Reynie thought to ask what was meant by Mr. Benedict's remark that he owed Constance the position _twice over. _The answer was simple: Mr. Benedict had, for most of his life, been vulnerable to narcoleptic spells whenever stricken by a strong surge of emotion. If Constance had not, by the most arduous telepathic exercise she had ever made, armed him against this condition, Roger Ruvie was of the opinion that his student body would have eaten Mr. Benedict alive.


	2. Analog and Flare

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Wammy's contingent of the Mysterious Benedict Society makes their first acquaintance with the students, the facilities, and the curious and sometimes troubling way life is conducted in the orphanage.

**Chapter Two: Analog and Flare**  
  
The moment the documentation came, it became clear why Mr. Ruvie had elected to pay for passage. Those bound for Winchester had been assigned a commercial flight to Heathrow. Those bound for the orphanage proper were granted a private jet (“far below average weight for a transatlantic flight,” Sticky had said, visibly glad he wasn't on it himself, “but the accident rate for private jets is less attributable to build than to pilot carelessness.” Reynie had assured him that, though he didn't know the net worth of the pilot, he did know the plane had been chartered for the safe delivery of passengers and would not be taken up on a whim in order for the pilot to show off.)  
  
And then there was the false identification. Reynie's passport read ARNOLD MOULTON, and he'd kept flipping it open with the compulsion and reluctance of a boy scratching a nasty bug bite. The off-campus Society had been issued false passports as well, from Sticky (glad to be George Washington no longer) on up to Milligan, who had never as long as they'd known him used his real first name and had managed to thwart all of Constance's attempts to get it floating to the top of his mind. The only ones not issued false identification were Mr. Benedict and Rhonda Kazembe, because the staff at Wammy's House were liable to have their backgrounds scrutinized.  
  
Number Two was to join Miss Perumal in seeing to the education of Sticky and Kate (“for two reasons,” she had said. “Firstly, if I understand these orphans correctly, I would inspire them only to greater heights of disorder. Secondly,” – here she had fixed them with a beady stare – “I _know_ you four.”) That was the most disorienting part of the arrangement: Amma would see his friends all the time, but Reynie would be only a weekend visitor.  
  
Constance, only on grounds of good behavior.  
  
Duly informed of this, she had thrown her ice cream cup at Mr. Benedict's violet pant leg and was now filling the plane's cabin with the sounds of a shrieking contest between herself and Madge the peregrine falcon.  
  
Reynie was pretending to treat the exchange accordingly – as a contest, and a close one at that – but it was to no avail in stopping it, and he now wanted nothing more than to sit with his aching ears in his palms.  
  
Rhonda, who had been standing as though waiting for something, frowned, nodded, and then gave a complex whistle. Madge stopped.  
  
Constance filled her lungs to scream again. Rhonda said, “Madge, disengage,” and the next scream elicited no response.  
  
“Madge forfeits,” said Reynie, strained. “Constance is the winner!”  
  
“Kate wasn't exaggerating,” said Rhonda. “The rest of you really are terrified to go near her.”  
  
In Reynie's opinion, a certain distance from Her Majesty the Queen's beak and talons was only good sense. They had operated on the assumption that airport security would feel the same; that was why the falcon was taking the private charter.  
  
“She's really a good girl once you get to know her,” said Rhonda, with a disturbingly blithe shrug.  
  
“So,” said Reynie, before Constance could devise another way to revenge herself, “now that we're down to the people who know, or will before the day's out, what's this sensitive information?” He frowned toward the light cockpit door. “Unless the pilots aren't meant to hear.”  
  
Mr. Benedict tapped his nose. “Already arranged for. I am specifically informed that the pilot, Mr. Block, has been a personal associate of Mr. Wammy's for years. We can reasonably conclude that we are not only allowed but encouraged to have this discussion.”  
  
The unspoken implication was that Mr. Block had no copilot. Reynie chose not to ask about that; there was a time the question would do some good, but that was _before_ they were suspended above the Northern Atlantic. “All right. I've wondered: why is it that Mr. Ruvie would tell you this sensitive information over the telephone, before you even accepted the post?”  
  
“That,” said Mr. Benedict, “has two explanations. The first is that the secret constitutes the school's mission statement, and its most fundamental problem.”  
  
“The second is that Mr. Ruvie is a nincompoop,” put in Constance.  
  
Mr. Benedict gave Constance a sharp look. “_Somewhat careless_ was the phrase I had in mind. A subtle but important distinction. And, Constance, I strongly recommend against allowing the Wammy children to know of your abilities. You are glad I don't speak readily of them, but if you speak too freely, it'll be just as bad as if I did it.”  
  
Constance, fuming, curled up to face away from them all.  
  
“This orphanage, you see, is composed of the brightest children gathered from all of Mr. Wammy's orphanages for one purpose: to ensure an heir to the great detective known as L, that his work may be carried on in the event of his death.”  
  
L. He was not only a great detective; he was the world's _greatest_ detective. (And L was definitely a he. His sole contact, the masked figure they called Watari, consistently referred to him in those terms.) He did all his business remotely; he was known only as a Gothic letter on a screen, and yet somehow he had managed to succeed where many a detective on the ground had failed. Reynie supposed the anonymity would make it easier for an heir to take over. He also realized that this must be the reason for his false passport. Anonymity protected L; it probably protected L's associates as well.  
  
And there, too, must be the pun Constance had been about to reveal last Friday. Villanelle. _That villain, L._ She'd only learned she would be going to Winchester that morning, she had been plainly excited about the change of scene, and even in her anticipation she was already formulating ways to complain about it. But he'd save that remark for when Constance was in a mood for a friendly gibe.  
  
“If this L guy is so great,” grumbled Constance around her pillow, “where was he during the Emergency?”  
  
“Not the most charitable of questions,” answered Mr. Benedict. “We must remember that L's whole mode of operations rests on the telephone, the modem, the airwaves: the very instruments that my brother was bending to his will. Indeed, while the Emergency was in effect, records show he solved not one missing-persons case – but since the fall of the Institute, he has solved thirty-one.”  
  
Reynie smiled. It sounded very much as though Mr. Benedict had made sure of that uncharitable question himself.  
  
He had to think for a few minutes before he began to realize why that might constitute a fundamental problem. “Mr. Benedict,” he said at length, “is that really the one purpose of the orphanage, that one of the orphans becomes L eventually?”  
  
Mr. Benedict sighed. “An oversimplification, but closer to the truth than I particularly like.”  
  
“And how many orphans are there?”  
  
“Once you and Constance arrive-- fifty-nine.”  
  
Nothing about this arrangement suggested Wammy's House would be at all a friendly place, Reynie reflected glumly as he stared into the white wall of mist outside the airplane window, looking listlessly for variations in the cloud surrounding. And this wasn't like the Institute. They were here to stay, and the best that could be made of it was the best that ever could be made.  
  
He had looked a long time and found only two places where the clouds thinned when his reverie was cut short by Constance's voice.  
  
“I've changed my mind,” she announced. “It's good news, not bad. What you're really telling me is from now on I have a secret weapon. And _you_ can't talk about it, Dad, and not you, Reynie, and not you, Rhonda, and not Rotten Roger Ruvie either, which means as long as I'm not really obvious I can use it just as I please.” She frowned suddenly. “Dad, what's _double-blind_?”

* * *

  
They disembarked in an underground hangar that contained exactly two airplanes, of which theirs was the larger. There was, however, room for more, and a rest area for their pilot (who had most definitely made the flight solo). The combined weight of the travel plans he had been through thus far began to make Reynie stagger. The secrecy, he understood. But the idea of an orphanage with this much money at its disposal...  
  
No sooner had they ascended the ramp to the outside and had their first blink in the morning sun of Hampshire (against their brains' fervent instinct that it ought to be the late evening) than a motorized scooter zoomed suddenly to block their path.  
  
Climbing down from it was a well-built auburn-haired boy of about fourteen, wearing a T-shirt patterned in bold stripes. “Welcome to Wammy's House,” he announced, shaking Reynie's hand and then making the rounds. “Hmm,” he commented after a moment. “Two teachers _and_ two orphans? That's not usual. All from the same place, I'll bet, and not one of Mr. Wammy's.” He glanced over at Madge, sitting regally in her cage on Rhonda's cart, and smilingly rolled his eyes. “All right, I've only reached the second observation and you have me. _Why_ do you have a peregrine falcon?”  
  
“Actually, she belongs to someone in town,” said Rhonda. “May I call a taxicab?”  
  
“Bad luck,” said the boy. “There's only one person on premises allowed a cell phone. That's Roger, and he's _not_ sharing it out.”  
  
“Er... why is no one allowed phones?” asked Reynie. He had never wanted one himself, but he knew this was not usual.  
  
“Too many intrigues in too short a time.”  
  
“What about land lines?” tried Rhonda.  
  
“Nah. The temptation to tap or cut them is pretty irresistible.”  
  
Rhonda sighed. “I'll decide what to do with Madge once I've had a better look at the possibilities.”  
  
“Now you're catching on!”  
  
The boy waved them on across the meadow (Rhonda awkwardly took Madge's cage in her arms, leaving her luggage cart with the scooter; Reynie took up her suitcase.) In the distance, by the nearest road, Reynie could make out a little bell tower and wrought-iron gates.  
  
“You've been debriefed on the way, right?” he asked them.  
  
“For some reason we're all expecting the world's greatest detective to die,” Constance supplied.  
  
“Danger _is_ a part of his trade,” said the older boy solemnly. “So, the two of you'll be wanting aliases. Mine's Matt. What's yours?”  
  
“You can pick any name in the world,” Constance demanded, “and you choose _Matt_?” She then stopped dead in her tracks and clapped her hand over her mouth, with no success whatsoever in stifling a sudden fit of giggles. (The word _later_ entered Reynie's head.)  
  
“Well, Mr. My Alias Is Matt,” she said, once recovered (huffing and puffing to keep up with the rest), “my _name_ is Constance Contraire. I think _Great Detective Constance Contraire_ has a lovely ring to it. Even if I wind up as this heir, I _can_ do it with my own name, can't I?”  
  
“No,” said Matt, guiding them across the road, “see, it's sort of like the school uniform here. You can't just--”  
  
“I wouldn't wear a school uniform if you had one,” interrupted Constance, peering hard toward the wrought-iron fence, “and you _don't_ have one, because no one in that yard is wearing the same clothes and one of them is kicking a ball around with _no shoes_.”  
  
In point of fact, no one was kicking a ball at this moment. All activity had ceased the moment they had crossed the road; all eyes were now fixed glintingly on the newcomers. The shoeless boy, who was about Reynie's age, strawberry blond, and just scruffy enough that it had to be a calculated look, stared with particular hostility.  
  
Matt, however, took the reception in stride and gave the strawberry blond boy a cheery wave. “He was just like you when he arrived,” he told Constance, _sotto voce_. “So we had to choose for him. From now on, I think you should be... hmm. Sweetiepie.”  
  
Constance broke into resplendent dimples. “You really think so?”  
  
Reynie, however, foresaw the charm wearing off of _Sweetiepie_ within the month, and the way Matt put it, it sounded as though Constance really might be stuck with it. “No,” he said hastily, “I think she'd much prefer...” (here he scrambled for the first apt word that might also make a good alias) “...Flare. And for me--” (this, he had actually considered during the trek from the hangar, a name that seemed to set him apart at Wammy's--) “Analog.”  
  
Constance shot Reynie a brief glower – perhaps less out of reaction to his point than because all the day's telepathy was beginning to wear her down, for the next moment she nodded judiciously and said, “Flare. I like it. Rhymes with _debonair_ and _derriere_ and _unfair_. Lots of potential.”  
  
The word _Contraire_ entered Reynie's mind as she gave him a wicked grin, one split second before rubbing furiously at her temples. She would be done with mind-reading for the day.  
  
“New residents,” called Matt, swinging open the gate. “Students, Analog and Flare – schoolmasters, Nicholas and Rhonda.”  
  
Thus cued, all students present descended on them.  
  
“Nicholas's nose isn't broken. It's naturally that way--”  
  
“That boy's pale because he uses sunscreen, not because he likes the indoors—”  
  
“That young lady usually dresses younger than this--”  
  
“Old man seems to have a good sense of humor--”  
  
“I think the girl, Flare, had a tantrum in the plane--”  
  
“They're from America--”  
  
“All from the same orphanage--”  
  
“--not bloody likely it's an orphanage at all, Loom--”  
  
“But from the same place, for certain.” The barefoot boy had spoken, and everyone else in the schoolyard fell silent. “Not one of Wammy's orphanages. No, he has to have sought at least one of them out, specifically. My money's on whichever teacher is covering eclectic lessons, but it's still too early to tell. And somewhere along the line, there are more than four people involved. Do you see how the Rhonda woman is handling that bird's cage? Not too familiarly. Meaning the real owner is elsewhere.”  
  
“How do you like their chances, Mello?” called a teenage girl with stark black hair in a bob.  
  
“The boy, Analog, he's, what, twelve, thirteen? No chance at all.” He looked to be about thirteen himself, but Reynie didn't need to understand the logic to flush miserably: Mello's contempt was unmistakable. “The girl, there's room to grow. But not to the top, not in two years. When she's six, I'll be fifteen, and when I'm fifteen, well, school rankings won't matter so much anymore.”  
  
(“I'm small for my age,” Constance muttered.)  
  
“You _are_ going for fifteen,” said the stocky boy called Loom, with the mingled reverence and approval reserved for one who reaches the highest expected standard.  
  
Mello snorted. “No, I was going to hunker down in Wammy's House as long as I could get away with, because I never want to learn to drive and the sky scares me.” (This elicited a few sniggers, mostly from the older children.) “Of _course_ fifteen!”  
  
“And who'd hire you, dressed as you are?” shouted a blotchy-faced nine-year-old girl who was plainly putting on more confidence than she actually felt. “A street gang?”  
  
“Tap, tap, _tap_,” answered Mello at once, and the girl's face crumpled sourly. “Make way for Matt, everyone,” he called. “Only fair to let them know the terrain before we test their mettle.”  
  
And make way they did. Reynie and Constance and even Rhonda went still reeling a bit from the barrage of deductions, but Mr. Benedict walked through the gap, silent and serene.  
  
“Everyone here's read _Sherlock Holmes_, haven't they?” asked Reynie as he set down his and Rhonda's luggage in the entrance hall.  
  
“Elementary curriculum,” grinned Matt.  
  
“Does Mello _actually_ mean to infiltrate a street gang and bring them down from within as soon as he turns fifteen?”  
  
“Only banter.” Matt paused. “_Probably_ only banter. Come on, I'll show you about.”  
  
He ushered them past the entrance hall to the nearest corridor, gesturing at the closed doors as he went. “These are the student dormitories. Five to a room. Seven for boys at the moment, four for girls, and the twelfth... well, let's leave that as a learning exercise for the faculty present, shall we?”  
  
Mr. Benedict examined the doorknob, tried it (without success), and managed to stifle a laugh. Matt nodded in an appraising sort of way.  
  
“There are two computers per room. Research and composition purposes only, and Roger contracted me to make sure of it. But anyone who's not outside at this hour is probably at the computer.” He raised his voice about two notches. “So let's see who turns out and follows us.”  
  
Reynie looked back at the doors behind them, and toward the windows just to be double-sure, but Matt's subtly-framed challenge had apparently ensured that no one did follow.  
  
“Why would half of them be working at the computer while the other half are playing in the yard?” asked Reynie at length.  
  
“Good catch: they wouldn't. I lied. This is the recreational hour, and no one's permitted to work.” Matt gave Reynie a wry look. “Especially not those of you whose aliases land toward the beginning of the alphabet. We don't like to come off as superstitious here, but that'll have an effect on how people see you, believe me.”  
  
Reynie was utterly unaware of any superstitions concerning the beginning of the alphabet.  
  
“Don't worry about it,” said Matt. “Not a story for the first day.”  
  
“Aren't _you_ doing work right now?” asked Constance.  
  
“Yeah,” said Matt reflectively. “Had that landed on me as top student's duty. Haven't been top rank for years, but the welcoming duty stuck. I guess Roger thinks I've got the right personality for it.” He pointed ahead to a barred door. “There's the dining hall. Kitchen opens doors for dinner at eleven. A lot of us like to hoard favorite foods for between meals, but keep a balanced diet, avoid the chocolate bars, and you'll have an easy time getting to things.” At the first door to his right: “Library. That'll be pretty popular for recreation.”  
  
Reynie peered in over Matt's shoulder. Next to Mr. Benedict's collection, which took up the three stories of his house, it was woefully small, but there were indeed half a dozen children slouched or crouched variously on chairs, tables or floor, thoroughly absorbed in their reading.  
  
“Good morning,” said Rhonda. “I'm Miss Kazembe, and this is Mr. Benedict. We look forward to working with you soon.”  
  
One twelve-year-old girl gave a halfhearted wave. Even the increasingly agitated falcon in Rhonda's arms attracted no show of interest in this room, and Rhonda withdrew in low spirits to set Madge down gently beside a potted plant.  
  
“Game room,” said Matt, carefully opening the door to the second room on the right. “But it's really two rooms, for all practical purposes. There are the video games, and then there are the toys.”  
  
The toys were closer to the door. Amid the noises of an unseen arcade, a ghost-pale boy in pajamas as white as his hair was placing a bath tugboat at different points on a chessboard with an intense, dreamlike concentration.  
  
“Near,” Matt told them quietly. “Mello thinks he's secretly working when he does this. I couldn't say, but this week's case file does involve a boat. Anyway, the toy half of the room is Near's domain. You never know what message you're sending if you try playing there; if you must play it _analog_, better to take a board game out into the hall or the library and hope for the best. But the arcade is where I am, most days, and if you're up for it I can take you to Joust levels you never dreamed existed.”  
  
He waved them on to the iron-railed stairs in the middle of the central hall.  
  
“Wait,” said Reynie. “What are the doors to the left?”  
  
“Toilets.”  
  
“The other three.”  
  
Matt sighed, mock-long-suffering. “Faculty. Roger's office is in the middle. Supplies to the left, teachers' offices to the right, sleeping quarters in the low building in back. Don't worry,” he added, remembering again that new teachers were present, “Roger will be waiting for you. His main virtue is patience.”  
  
He motioned them again up the stairs (Mr. Benedict had to carry Constance, who was fed up by now with the walking.) “The classrooms are divided by knowledge base. Upper-level... lower-level... eclectic... and there's the general lecture hall at the end. And behind us – turn around, turn around – is the beating heart of Wammy's House.”  
  
A darkened room stretched out before them, filled with the eerie white frames of high-end Banana consoles.  
  
“Comprehensive satellite data,” said Matt. “Full criminal records for any nation that's joined the twenty-first century. Statistical databases of all kinds – if it can be measured and someone took the trouble to record it on a network of decent size, it's here. This is the treasure trove that's come of L's labors to date, and no one has ever caught on that this little Hampshire orphanage has half share in it. _Your_ job here,” he said, with a flourish toward Reynie and Constance, “is to look carefully at the mountain of raw facts around his old case files, and pull out the intriguing little threads that run just under the surface. Because _that_ is what being L is all about.” He grinned. “Me, I can break down the trends a bit further with a little Java, but it's not quite the same.”  
  
He cleared his throat. “Well, that's about enough to go on for the first day. Any last questions?”  
  
Reynie had about a dozen clamoring to be asked, but there was one without which the rest would be meaningless. “You tested us with at least one lie,” said Reynie. “Did we miss any others?”  
  
“No, that was the only lie, well done catching it. But you did miss several key omissions, Analog. Don't worry, you'll learn them all before Sunday chapel anyway.”  
  
Rhonda frowned. “About the satellite photos. May I show them to the falcon? She's a smart bird, but she's not familiar with the Winchester area.”  
  
“Um,” said Matt. “Sure? I'd better get you acquainted--” And, without further ado, Rhonda went down to fetch Madge. (“Rec's over in two minutes,” he said, “but this is something I've got to see, _especially_ if she's telling the truth.”)  
  
Since arrival Mr. Benedict had plainly aimed to favor the opening of his eyes and ears over that of his mouth, but at long last, he spoke. “You are saying that the key point of the education here is a certain aptitude for pattern recognition?”  
  
“Yeah, you have it. Well, that and formulating a good plan of capture. _Much_ harder than you make it sound, though.”  
  
Mr. Benedict nodded thoughtfully to himself, and Reynie doubted the thoughts were ones of approval. It was an astounding exercise in deduction that Reynie itched with every fiber of his being to try, but the way Matt had put it, it really wasn't much of an ultimate goal for the education of fifty-nine children.  
  
“One more,” said Constance, through the terrific yawn of a five-year-old with jet lag. “About Mello. He's the next L, isn't he?”  
  
Matt whooped and rushed to muss her hair as a sonorous churchbell rang overhead. “Flare, is it? You catch on quick!”

* * *

  
Roger Ruvie's was one of those offices whose main function was to impress its visitors with the vastness of its space. He left no place to sit in front of his desk, so Benedict simply stood with dignity. It was still a happy novelty not to require his oldest daughter at his elbow whenever he stood for sustained periods.  
  
“The student abstracts,” said Roger, passing a binder about two hundred pages thick. “Please return it to me when you are not using it; it's best that the locations of the hidden cubbyholes in this office remain known to as few people as possible.”  
  
“I have a small query that will probably not be addressed in this binder,” said Mr. Benedict. “Has any of them, to your knowledge, expressed a reluctance to take up driving lessons?”  
  
Roger sighed. “You must mean Near. That was a firestorm a month or so ago; I'd thought the matter dead and buried by now. Near was, at a guess, simply stating his wishes, but the chief point of contention was whether or not L could drive.”  
  
Benedict nodded thoughtfully. “Is Near one of our better students?”  
  
“The best, actually-- academically, that is.”  
  
The unprovoked attack on Mello's dress sense by a weaker party. Matt's wariness of Near, and his overly enthusiastic acceptance of Constance. The panoramic show of indifference among the children in the library, while Matt stood in the doorway.  
  
It was like an optometrist's chair: one flip of the lens, and lines heretofore meaningless suddenly resolved themselves. In this case, they were lines of battle.  
  
The tension centered on Mello and Near – or, perhaps, simply those who supported Mello and those who opposed him. The object of the fight seemed to be less victory than a matter of flag etiquette: the most proper display of L's standard.  
  
Now that he knew this, he would be able to ignore it with much more facility than if he had remained in the dark.  
  
“Incidentally, _can_ L drive?” It was vital to see whether truth had a role in the fight.  
  
“There is cause for the ambiguity. He can, but he usually chooses not to. Watari complains often about that.” Roger smiled slightly. “On the other hand – I am speaking from circumstantial evidence only – there is an excellent chance he was your copilot this morning.”  
  
How could L possibly have been their copilot? If they had had one at all, he would have to have entered the cockpit before anyone else, including Kyle Block, got there... failed to disembark on reaching Winchester, or else done it substantially later... gone a whole flight with his presence unremarked or unsuspected by Constance...  
  
Nicholas Benedict found himself laughing fit to burst.  
  
Wammy's House was prone to faction. The vast majority of the children would never be considered L's heir and had to know it, but they insisted on being melted down and recast in the great man's image anyway. And yet there were little touches, like the door to the twelfth dormitory. So much of what he'd seen here, from the children and now possibly from L himself, was simply playful challenge for play's sake, and very cleverly done at that.  
  
He could tell he was going to like it here a good deal.


	3. Saint Nicholas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Reynie and Mr. Benedict, Wammy's House will take more adjustment than they had foreseen.

**Chapter Three: Saint Nicholas**

“Kate,” said Mrs. Washington plaintively from her wheelchair at the outdoor table, “if we must sit out here, is there any chance you might take off that coat? I'm sure no one wants you catching your death of the heat.”

Most of Mr. Benedict's grown-up friends had a habit of good intentions that got in the way of whatever wanted doing, but Sticky's parents were the hardest to convince of it. Confidence always helped, though – when Sticky was confident in a dispute with his parents, he was confident indeed – so she let Mrs. Washington see her broad grin as she pinched the stiff sleeves of her new biker jacket.

“Heat, I can handle.”

“Don't worry, Mom,” said Sticky earnestly. “We're within immediate reach of both shelter and water, and Kate is showing none of the symptoms of heat exhaustion. More Orangina?” 

Mrs. Washington's tight smile was not even slightly reassured, but she tilted her glass.

Meanwhile, Milligan, who had set out to scale the exterior of their townhome six minutes ago, had reached the top of the front facade. “It's a shame this is such a _modern_ English building,” he said. “No chimney, no converted hayloft... Fortunately, the architects seem to have installed a small attic window before they changed their minds and decided it was rafters only. Only drywall and siding at center here,” he said, tapping perhaps three feet below the point of the roof.

Number Two quirked her mouth. “What Kate and her father are speaking around with such bravado,” she informed Mrs. Washington around a mouthful of spinach pasty, “is that Mr. Benedict contacted us via a toll phone not far from his orphanage, assuring us that all was well – but he made no mention of Rhonda, nor has Rhonda seen fit to contact us herself.”

“I guess I don't follow,” said Mrs. Washington, smiling wistfully; failure to follow others' trains of thought was an all too common occurrence since Mr. Benedict had given her lodging at his home.

“I'm well acquainted with my sister,” said Number Two. “She's holding something back, probably for the sake of effect, and under the circumstances--"

Kate cried out in glee: Madge had barely crested the building across the way before dropping to alight on the stiff arm of Kate's leather jacket.

“Where can we get some more leather to boil?” she said excitedly.

* * *

Reynie Muldoon was an average boy in many respects – average weight and height for his age, unremarkable brown hair of an average length, ordinary dress sense. He could carry as many books as the average thirteen-year-old, and the ill-fated week at Stonetown Upper had confirmed he was still middle of the pack in footraces.

He had never before been accustomed to being average in intelligence.

On only a few occasions in his life (most of them terrifying) had he found himself closely matched in a battle of wits. But at Wammy's, it seemed liable to be a daily occurrence.

On the Tuesday night after arrival, he had had to deduce for himself which of the boys' dormitories had a vacant bed, though the answer had been disguised by a hastily-assembled pile of detritus. (Too hasty. All the clothing piled beside the bed had been clean, and the standard sheets, rumpled though they were, were too crisp to have been slept in by a slob dedicated enough to have left such a pile.) 

At the first lower-level class Wednesday morning (not Rhonda's; it was led by a Natasha whose last name still eluded him), he had allowed the boy at the next seat, called Polaris, to guide him ever deeper into error about the interpretation of actuary tables up to the moment he heard a terrific sigh of Constance's directly behind him.

The case file was incomprehensible, which Reynie devoutly hoped was due to the fact that he had come in two days after it had begun. Everyone present must have known what case details the current assignment on the vagaries of international waters and internal plumbing was meant to explain, but no one had any intention to clarify, or indeed to speak about the assignment they had. But in his less confident moments, he had to wonder if next week would prove any better.

On the other hand, he had learned a good deal about Wammy's House itself.

If there was no school uniform apart from the alias, there certainly was an informal dress code, with two chief components.

First, there was sitting posture. Wammy's assemblies were filled with boys and girls who sat with their chairs backward, or their feet in the chair, or lounging like some insolent lord enthroned, or eschewing a chair entirely for the table or the floor. Reynie appeared, by comparison, to be something escaped from the nearest finishing school.

Second, it seemed that everyone who studied at Wammy's was required to possess at least one off-putting personal quirk. A blond girl called Linda carried a charcoal pencil with her and continually spun it between her fingers; a dark girl called Magritte wore cape and mask everywhere; you were sure to know Near was harping on some theme of thought if he was winding a finger around one of his locks. Misfit, that vicious bob-haired cohort of Mello's, liked to run an old half-crown piece over her knuckles, and as for Mello himself, it transpired the reason Matt had warned them to steer clear of the chocolate was that the school's regular bulk supply of chocolate bars was understood by varied and painful experience to be Mello's sole possession. 

The door to the twelfth dormitory, Reynie saw upon examination of the doorknob, had been illicitly picked many times and by a few different implements. Probably it had also been illicitly re-locked; that would amuse Mr. Benedict without any need to know what was behind it. Certainly, Reynie couldn't know: it was down to Kate – but she was now miles away – or one of the orphans who had picked the door in the first place – and they weren't liable to be half as good-natured.

He had been expected to keep an ear out for skitterings, because some unknown party had released the mice from the basement lab the night before they arrived, but neither he nor anyone else had seen any sign of the mice since, so odds were they weren't in the building at all. Some of the students claimed to know the identity of the perpetrator, but they were maddeningly obtuse to further inquiry.

Matt's other “key omissions” that had not been about architecture (the bell tower, the equipment shed, the mailroom) concerned the fact that, though Mello _was_ likely to be the next L, Near was likelier yet. It was, it turned out, common knowledge in the orphanage that Matt was Mello's right-hand man. But that wasn't quite fair. So far as Reynie could see, Matt was better described as Mello's only real friend.

(According to a note passed by Constance in Elementary Forensics, she had laughed so hard upon introduction to Matt because his real name was Mail. Reynie didn't see the humor in it; at Stonetown Orphanage, he had known a boy named Lacy who would probably have given all his possessions to live in an orphanage that – never mind required – _allowed _him to change his name.)

“Sunday chapel” was Winchester Cathedral, and attendance was heavily enforced. Reynie could not yet square this fact with anything else he had learned about Wammy's House.

Lastly, the infamous students whose names had fallen toward the beginning of the alphabet had been Matt's predecessors at the top of the class. One had committed suicide several years ago and the second, who had run away shortly thereafter, had last year been revealed as a serial killer. To make matters worse, the suicide, called A or Alternative, had, like Reynie, stubbornly refused to show any particular quirks. Only “Analog's” struggle to understand the material had staved off concern, but it had also staved off any other desire the Wammy orphans might have had to walk up and talk to him. The school rankings loomed large here.

Constance, however, was becoming quite at home. She could not contain for long the fact that she was Mr. Benedict's adopted daughter, but this was apparently no cause for resentment – teachers, except perhaps the long-absent Mr. Wammy, were not held in high esteem here. Meantime, she had always preferred her feet in her chair and (though “Flare's” inordinate fondness for cake frosting was not as highly regarded as it was in the teenage orphans) her flair for an off-the-cuff insulting limerick made her a surpassing representative of Wammy's House social standards. That was good. Reynie knew well enough that she really _might _be top of the class one day... if she didn't join Mello's party first.

They spoke chiefly at night in the corridor after hours – but always by alias and never concerning Reynie's suspicion that Constance was relying so heavily on telepathy that it was spoiling her native abilities, because they were under the gaze of at least eleven dormitory residents who were still astounded that two orphans might know each other from elsewhere. As he'd told Constance last night, Wammy's House wasn't L.I.V.E – but it surely was “dediugsim.” Misguided, to the point where all his inner needles were beginning to spin in crazy directionless circles.

But this morning, there was a solid magnetic North at last, for this was the morning Mr. Benedict was to begin his plan of instruction.

* * *

_“Riddles!” _Loom, between his disgust and the seating arrangement, was fairly shouting in Reynie's left ear. “That's what we're doing in the new eclectic class, the one we've bent all our admission conventions for? _Riddles?_”

“Don't be mistaken, don't be misled,” intoned Linda. “Trust not in messages, just use your head.”

“Yes, let's all listen to Linda,” sneered Misfit. ”We'd better look in the wallpaper for subliminal shrimps, that'll solve our puzzle.”

“The shrimps are in _Sign of the Seahorse_,” said Linda calmly, “and they're not subliminal.”

Reynie now realized why Linda's snatch of verse had sounded so familiar. A staggering thought. Had Linda solved _The Eleventh Hour_ by finding the subliminal images _first?_

“But really,” said Matt. (It was the first time in this first week that Reynie had actually shared a classroom with Near, Mello or Matt: eclectic lessons encompassed everyone, in a lecture hall twice the size of the other two.) “When has any criminal ever left a riddle, except that he _wanted_ to be found?”

Reynie raised his finger and opened his mouth before he realized that none of the riddles he and his friends had solved, however serious the circumstance, had actually been an exception to the rule.

“And when he's mad enough to want to be found,” Matt went on, “who's to say that the riddle isn't entirely beyond the boundaries of _sense_?”

Misfit broke into helpless laughter. “Beyond... well done, Matt, beyond is _just_ the word.”

The laughter spread to most of the room: it seemed to be a favored joke that one of the best students in the orphanage's history had come to the end of his rope, committed several murders, and attempted to take his own life. 

Reynie would burst if he did not say something in Mr. Benedict's defense.

“But assuming there _are _riddles,” he said, his voice quite calm, “isn't it a useful data point? _Knowing_ where your quarry wants to lead you?” He spoke in the voice of unhappy experience, but no need for Wammy's House to know how neatly a hasty perspective on riddles had once sealed the Society into a trap.

“We could simply follow the_ real _clues of the case,” snapped Loom.

“Assuming you can follow the accidental clues,” came an understated voice that swept away all background talk, “I trust the deliberate ones are well within your ability.” It was the first time Reynie had heard Near speak, and yet the authority of his challenge was unmistakable.

At that, Rhonda walked the aisles. Here was the first inkling of Mr. Benedict's larger design: only every third student was given a sheet. Reynie did get one, and opened it to read:

_Some words of introduction.  
_I ply two certain trades--  
___That one makes little profit;  
_This leaves me disarrayed.  
_These words of introduction  
_Are hard truth, or harder sham:  
_It's plain I must rest from my toils,  
_But less plain who I am.  
_Twelve words of introduction  
_Do not the total fix,  
_But twelve to you convey these points.  
_No need for thirty-six.______________

Constance being seated some distance away, Reynie waved his arms to include Loom on his left and the blotch-faced Liliana on his right. “Okay,” he said, pointing at the bottom of his sheet. “The answer must be twelve words long and it's only part of a thirty-six-word whole. The introductory part, I assume. The difficulty is the other...” He paused uncomfortably. “The first two...”

He was suddenly very aware that his was the only voice audible in the assembly hall.

Loom's beefy face positively shone with astonished contempt. “How d'you expect us to keep the school rankings straight, if we _hand each other the answers?_”

“No, trust me,” said Reynie, gesturing toward Mr. Benedict, “This is definitely the way he wants us to--”

“Maybe _you've_ always needed moral support to solve Nicholas's riddles,” said Loom, jutting his chin over the knee it rested on, “but that's really not my problem.”

“Loom's got it right for once,” declared Mello. “Anyone who doesn't have a copy, make one.” And he himself took out his binder and proceeded to do just that.

As usual, Mello's word was final. Loom to Reynie's left and Liliana to his right began at once to copy out Reynie's riddle on whatever surface was handy (for Liliana, that was the desk.) Near, who was also left without an original copy – by Mr. Benedict's design, Reynie imagined – was no less compliant; indeed, he hardly could be, having implicitly rested the competence of each student on his ability to solve a simple riddle.

Loom's assessment of the school standard shortly proved accurate. Within a minute, Near uncurled himself from the tabletop to bring his answer to the front. Ten seconds after that, Mello brought his, fixing Mr. Benedict with a poisonous glare. 

Reynie sighed and bent down over Mr. Benedict's riddle.

_Some words of introduction.  
_I ply two certain trades--  
_That one makes little profit;  
_This leaves me disarrayed.  
_These words of introduction  
_Are hard truth, or harder sham:  
_It's plain I must rest from my toils,  
_But less plain who I am.________

Someone whose identity was unclear and who was either honest or dishonest definitely worked two jobs. Two certain trades – only it was plain they could rely on neither. Two jobs of which Reynie was supposed to be _certain, _then; Mr. Benedict was far too precise to use that word as mere filler. The person in the riddle was going to die, or resign, or maybe the dishonesty was that he or she planned to resign but said they were going to die. Or perhaps the other way around; it didn't sound as though retirement was affordable. Or perhaps resigning from the unprofitable job to keep the stressful one. Or somehow lying so that the stressful job was done, but still paid? But it was clear that the twelve words also had a possibility of being true.

Even when you narrowed down all the alternatives, how could you possibly convey this idea in only twelve words?

Maybe the _introduction_ was really thirty-six words long. If so, it would at least narrow the field to something long-winded.

All around him, he heard the sound of students tapping twelve beats. Ahead and to his right, Linda paused a moment and tapped twenty-four more, then hastily scribbled and rushed to the desk, flushed in sheer disbelief that she was the third to the table.

Her rhythm had not followed any particular poetic beat.

All right, then, he would try to think long-winded. _It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..._ A complete thought in twelve words, and he hadn't even been trying! _It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way-- _had he missed anything between the winter of despair and going direct to Heaven? Sticky would know. Reynie did not. But he had exceeded the thirty-six-word limit well before getting to the end of that introduction, and in any case none of the passage fit the riddle.

Whether he was on the right track or not, the context would narrow it down. A person announcing their own impending death or resignation. A famous one, or it wouldn't be an exact quote. There were plenty to choose from. But how could any of them be uttered by a person who might be lying and might be telling the truth, depending on who he or she was? Shouldn't their identity be clear from the start? How, especially, could he be certain of this person's job without being certain of their identity? The “I” was as essential as it was impossible.

A queue was now forming at Mr. Benedict's desk, and Loom was a part of it. In sheer desperation Reynie turned back to the stanza he'd figured out at first glance, in case there was anything he'd missed.

_But twelve _to you_ convey these points..._

This_ leaves me disarrayed_...

Reynie gave his pencil a wry look before jotting down the answer. Plainly, Mr. Benedict was adjusting too well to the spirit of this place.

* * *

About thirty students had not handed in any answer. (Liliana was among them, and so, strangely, was Constance.) These stayed in the eclectic study hall while the others earned an early dismissal.

“I handed a paper in,” seethed Loom to no one in particular as Mello stalked past to the stairwell, “but if my answer really was the right one, it's bollocks.”

“Put it this way,” said Reynie, “he works two jobs. One isn't a big earner, and the other – the one in the introduction that he hates, at the moment at least – is _writing._”

“Writing about writing,” grunted Loom. “I had it right, then. _It is with a heavy heart that I take up my pen_. Which is _bollocks_.”

“How so?” asked Reynie, startled by his vehemence.

“Who thinks it's a realistic possibility that that passage was written by Dr. Watson? A _fictional character_?”

“Some of the most avid and venerable literary societies in the country love to pretend they disagree with you,” said Linda serenely, with a spin of her charcoal pencil. “A member of a Sherlockian society would be just the kind of person to taunt L, too.”

“So it'd just mean _I'm out to get you,_” said Loom. “Not all that useful, really. L must get that about five times a year. Anyway, you're only defending Nicholas because he gave you a puzzle an _artist_ had a fighting chance at. Better than you, though, Analog. Just the fact that you _know '_Mr. Benedict' shouldn't make you assume he's any good.”

Linda glanced hastily at Reynie's face and said, “That would depend on how well he knows him.”

“He's having the others work together for the answer,” said Reynie, his outburst successfully repressed, nodding toward the door. “I know that. He's not about to let anyone at Wammy's be left in the dust.”

“Poor old Saint Benedict,” said Loom. “No, poor old _Saint Nicholas_. All he wants is Christmas the whole year round, no child without a gift, and we have to bring up inconvenient reality and spoil the fun.”

It was such a categorical contrast, and so in line with the unspoken sentiment of the whole orphanage, that Reynie had to stop for a moment to figure out what lay behind it.

“Loom,” he said after consideration, “do we ever have _lessons_ here at Wammy's House? Or is it only tests?”

At that moment, the doors swung open and the remaining sixty percent of Wammy's House poured through it.

“Good one, Flare!” shouted a small Asian boy in blue footie pajamas, thumping Constance on the arm. “_Something he already knows we know._ Elementary curriculum! Too bad he won't be new forever...”

Reynie realized what Constance's predicament had been. She had to have found out the answer – she'd been sitting about five chairs away from Mello – but there was no way of explaining _how_ she knew, especially as Mr. Benedict knew perfectly well she never _had _read _Sherlock Holmes._ But if the title had floated to the top of any mind she had bee reading, she at least had the facility to pretend to lay groundwork.

Pretended groundwork, perhaps, but it had been real enough where the others were concerned. They, who had entered the assembly hall in a dour mood, were buzzing with happy enthusiasm: they had succeeded where, at least by Loom's account, they were generally supposed to fail and grope in the darkness for some idea as to how they had gone wrong. Liliana, whose emotions had ranged from quiet misery to screaming spite for all the short time Reynie had known her, was exiting the doors with a look of thoughtful wonder.

“_We_ had a test this morning,” said Reynie to Loom as Constance joined Reynie's throng. “_They _had a lesson.”

“Hrm,” said Loom, appearing vaguely to catch Reynie's point. “Still throws off the rankings, though,” he said. “And Mello agrees with me, it was a stupid answer. Did you see the way he looked at jolly old Nicholas? Couldn't even spare any extra anger for Near beating him to the table.”

Constance shook her head scowlingly. “No, he just thought Mr. Benedict was very rude to assign it.”

“And how well have _you_ got to know Mello these three days?” chortled Loom.

“Not _too_ well,” she snapped. “But I do want to be rich.”

“What?” said Linda blankly. Reynie had to admit it was his honest reaction as well.

“I want a big old house with lots of servants,” Constance went on, a bit dreamily. “Slides instead of stairwells, _water _slides, maybe. Rideable dumbwaiters. Trap doors I could pull out from under houseguests when they were rude to me. Hired minstrels to sing my most insulting poems. I could get a cake or a piggyback ride just by snapping my fingers.”

Linda had covered her mouth, but her eyes were dancing with delighted laughter.

“And do you know what?” said Constance with an abrupt bump back to earth. “I probably _am_ going to be rich in the end. I've got a good inheritance waiting for me, just like Mello.” She glared straight into Reynie's eyes. “That doesn't mean I want Mr. Benedict to die.”

Thus far, Reynie had made only token concealment of his feelings about Mello: he was a bully, pure and simple. A high-achieving bully was cut from the same cloth as any other. He had worried before now that Constance liked Mello a bit too much, that she might end up like Misfit, living only to score cheap points for the sake of his approval.

But now he had to concede one thing. Constance knew without question that Mello, bully though he doubtless was, could not be called “pure and simple.”

* * *

It was Magritte, the masked girl always poking about for a good fifth sub-basement in which to do hazily-defined machinations, who found Madge roosted in the belfry that Friday, cheerfully devouring one of the mice that had been released from the lab the night before their arrival. But it was Rhonda who was able to get near enough to her to open the new messenger tube.

It turned out, when Reynie and Constance did the honors of unsealing, that the letter was nothing much; Kate and Sticky knew perfectly well there'd be a reunion tomorrow. The point was simply that Kate had teamed up with her pet falcon and dreamed up a new line of communication to the outside world, and she was to be congratulated for it.

Rhonda would guard message contents as instructed, no mistake, but she would also make sure that the mail-by-Her-Majesty system saw a _lot_ of use. It would take more than a lack of telecommunications to keep her isolated from half the Benedict Society.


	4. An Erroneous Diagnosis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first weekend excursion to Winchester markedly alters the Society's place, real and perceived, in the order of Wammy's House.

“Why _do_ we go to the cathedral every Sunday?” Reynie asked Linda, on the flexible omnibus out to Winchester that Saturday. “Is anyone at this school actually religious?”

“When they are,” said Linda, “they tend to keep it to themselves. Mr. Wammy isn't a believer either, so far as I know, and he's the one who instituted the policy – but old Anglicans are funny that way. They might not believe a word of what they hear in a cathedral, but they still think it indispensable to go every week.”

Reynie shook his head. “Strange folks, these old Anglicans.”

“Well,” said Linda, smiling, “have you ever _been _inside a cathedral?”

“I've been forced to be in lots of places,” said Constance, “and haven't liked one yet.”

With a week of astounding subtlety to account for, the bad behavior in the plane wasn't held against her, and Constance Contraire spoke from a jaunty perch on the front seat of the omnibus. Reynie and Constance would be among the first to disembark, for Number Two's townhouse was about as far into Winchester's outskirts as English law permitted.

The English laws seemed, on the whole, to be a good thing. The outskirts of Stonetown stretched mile on mile in gaudy little suburban mazes and dreary half-abandoned industrial wrecks, and, seeing it for the first time, Reynie was sure it was only lack of space that kept Kate and Sticky's bland white clapboard townhouse from being tucked into one of the former.

Linda stood as Reynie did. “I'm going with you, if you don't mind.”

Reynie considered. “Not a bit,” he said.

“Good,” said Loom, suddenly standing up as well. “Want to see these other people, the ones that own that falcon of Rhonda's.”

Reynie _ did _ have reservations about that, but Loom had thus far been nothing worse than a gruff representative of Wammy's House culture, so he didn't have much of a leg to stand on. Four orphans disembarked the omnibus and descended upon the townhouse.

“Internet news is accessible, but inadequate,” Linda said to Sticky, “so we're some of the biggest newspaper buyers in town ourselves. And Cadbury's, while we're at it – unless it's those idiots who really respect Mello, not just respect in the chav sense.”

“I've come to respect Miss Perumal in the first way,” Sticky returned by way of choosing not to comment on classmates he didn't know, as the tray (biscuits, clotted cream and cucumber sandwiches) began to pass round the table. “Thanks to her tutelage, I have now the facility not only to pronounce Tamil, but even to conduct a few ordinary conversations – not only with Miss Perumal, but with her mother as well.”

Kate grinned. “If his Tamil conversations are as ordinary as his English ones...”

Loom bit into the first biscuit and paused. “This... this is _ very _rich.”

“Compliments to Moocho Brazos!” said Kate. “We tried those dry things you Britons call biscuits, and begged him to improvise.” She chewed on the last of hers. “Fantastic.”

Reynie tried his. Butter and currants seemed to feature prominently in the recipe. He savored it.

“I'll note he didn't think cucumber sandwiches needed improving on,” said Linda. “Mmm, he's put dill in.”

Number Two, who had already nearly emptied her plate, swallowed hastily and nodded. “Moocho is a creative artist, and follows the most-neglected first principle of creativity: if it's very good already, radical changes will probably not be an improvement.”

“Pity Mr. Benedict and Miss Kazembe couldn't join us,” said Milligan.

Reynie shook his head. “There's this thing at American schools called a teacher planning day – I think that's every weekend at Wammy's. And not at all optional, at the moment.”

“We run them ragged,” Loom assured Milligan, grinning.

Number Two attempted to make an admonishment but was quite inaudible through her mouthful of biscuits and cream. Constance giggled.

Loom leaned close to Reynie. “Is that her _ second _ plate?”

“At least,” said Reynie, noticing a peach pit tucked underneath the rim. “Par for the course, though.”

“Just her constitution,” said Kate. “She sleeps three hours a night at most, but she makes it up in food.”

Loom's left foot slipped suddenly from its lodging on the edge of the chair. “Interesting,” he said.

Reynie cocked a head at Constance, who promptly pulled a pig's nose and informed him that _ cheating rots the brain. _

Milligan spread his hands. “Number Two's done well enough taking charge. It's not the same since Mr. Benedict's departure, but it's good to have a principal teacher so much on Sticky's wavelength. Were I left to my own devices cobbling my knowledge into handouts and worksheets, I would quite despair.” He winked at Kate, who no doubt despaired at any such expurgation of Milligan's skillset. “Well, what news of the other school at the table? Guests not excluded.”

Loom shrugged, his expression a portrait in poker-face.

“Reynie's not top of the class, and it's giving him awful fits,” said Constance blithely (for she had absolutely insisted, during introductions, that she and Reynie be allowed to use their names with Sticky and Kate). “Me, I'm underachieving. He should try it.”

Kate stared at Reynie, beside herself.

“How can you _not_ be the best?” she demanded. “With Sticky out of the running, yet?”

“It's no aspersion,” said Linda. “The top of the class isn't for mere mortals.”

Kate nodded thoughtfully. “An orphanage full of deductive geniuses and nothing else. Must get a bit monotonous. Imagine what they'd make of someone like good old S.Q.?”

“Who?” said Linda, curiously.

“S.Q. Pedalian,” answered Sticky. “An old acquaintance whose intellect is nothing to be spoken for, nor can he be called any apt judge of character, yet he may be the most good-hearted person we've ever known. Indeed, we owe him our lives.”

Sticky did not mention it, but Mr. Curtain was another who owed S.Q. his life – and, incredibly, had been visibly touched to be so rescued. S.Q. was faithfully visiting Curtain in prison to this day, no doubt endowing him with many an earnest malaprop as he struggled not to trip over his own feet.

Mincemeat, Reynie realized, his spirit sinking. Mincemeat was what Wammy's House would make of good old S.Q.

“So,” said Loom, the instant he could follow Reynie and Constance out into the front garden. “Tell me about Number Two. What's her family like?”

“Well,” answered Reynie, “she's an orphan, like us. Mr. Benedict took her in for her protection. I think she was a teenager at the time... but probably a young teenager; it would have to be before her voice changed.”

Loom pressed harder. “Brothers, sisters?”

Reynie cocked his head. “She never said, but it has to be no. If there were any, she'd have told Mr. Benedict, and he wouldn't want to break up a family.”

“Why's she called Number Two?” growled Loom.

“She chose it, of course,” said Reynie, now thoroughly perplexed. “She's Mr. Benedict's second-in-command.”

“Also,” said Constance, “just _look at her._” This was possibly not an understandable joke. Wammy's House seemed not to have heard of wooden pencils. In any case Loom did not crack a smile, but only harrumphed and grew taciturn; Constance, though visibly unhappier about her own silence, still refused to shed any light on the matter; and, though Linad shortly joined them, conversation from that point had to be gouged like dried glue out of the nozzle until Constance had the presence of mind to call Sticky out for some tips on this actuary business they'd been studying.

Linda tried, with disappointingly limited success, to draw the evening landscape as they walked to the designated hostel. “Why the third degree back there, Loom?”

“Have you _ever_ known someone to eat like that?” Loom demanded. “For lack of sleep?”

“Well, no,” said Linda, smiling.

This seemed, somehow, not to be the answer Loom expected. “Never?” he prodded. “You don't remember a guest lecturer? Or an IT consultant? Overnight cleaner? Kitchen worker? Postman?”

“I do remember a lot of fuss about a line worker who ate all the eclairs first day hired,” said Linda thoughtfully. “Bad posture, they said, and Number Two doesn't exactly lack poise, if that matters, but then I never witnessed this. I tend to eat healthy.”

Loom's gape was like that of a goldfish. “You – can you possibly – oh to be fair Near hasn't seen it either, gives himself dead away, but at least he knows enough to _pretend_ – and you, unlike Near, occasionally _look_ at your fellow human beings – Linda,” said Loom, now wound up in disgust, “if a less observant child ever darkened Wammy's doorstep, we would have to call him _Roger._”

“Hmm,” said Linda. She felt her face flood with humiliation, but her voice remained cool and even. “The real line of inquiry is what she needed protection _from_, don't you think? And whether it's the same thing that boy was talking of.”

“The real line of inquiry,” said Loom firmly, “is whether L knows that woman is in Winchester.”

Reynie never _ had _ been in a cathedral before. He'd heard of flying buttresses, certainly, and seen details of a compass rose, and he'd seen the outside of many. The outside of Winchester Cathedral, particularly, was notably grand and old and isolated, but then grand old isolated buildings were a considerably less remarkable occurrence in England.

The inside of a cathedral, however, defied such academic description.

Here, the dust of centuries floated downward from an infinitely high roof on a hundred slanting beams of colored light, the tombs of nobles and luminaries remembered and forgotten stretched away into the distance, and the stone beams above overlapped like the lines of a great intricate shell. Here, the echoes of his footfalls redounded with significance, and when its bell sounded the time (it might have been the very kind of bell in the tower of Wammy's), the peal reverberated through him as though he were made of air. Even Mello had a look of disinterested wonder; even Near raised his head; and Constance did not seem in any mood to complain after all. Within the walls of Wammy's House were fifty-nine orphans clawing for a better place on the totem pole; within Winchester Cathedral, somehow, Wammy's House was a single entity.

But when the priest had made his procession to the altar, the choir had ceased to fill the place like thunder, and the readings and homilies began in painfully put-on cadence, attention began to wander – and, from the orphans, more than a proper share of the attention seemed to wander in the direction of Reynie and Constance.

The following Monday, all Wammy's House was rehashing an incident some five years before, where two comically slick salesmen wearing four wristwatches between them had called at the gate to promote some other school; they were shortly found to be carrying gunnysacks large enough to hold a body, offered a pretense of interview, led in a maddening succession of circles, and finally driven out of Wammy's House on a wrought-iron rail, coated (for lack of tar and feathers) in rubber cement and makeshift confetti.

This revival occurred because, the previous Saturday evening, Linda had discovered in a Winchester library a microfilm back issue of the _Stonetown Times,_ lauding a young man named S.Q. Pedalian as instrumental in the arrest of Ledroptha Curtain, long at large after the kidnapping and abuse scandal of his Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened.

This gave rise to a tale: Ledroptha Curtain (by the looks of him) was Nicholas Benedict's evil twin, and due to that family connection, Mr. Benedict had tracked him down. The Institute, by reports found in the databank, had been brought down by “infiltration”, but by the same reports, secret agencies around the world had tried in vain; ergo, the infiltrator must have been a child, and an unattached child; ergo, middling students Analog and Flare might well have managed a major infiltration when not Near, nor Mello, nor A nor B, had done any task of the same order.

This, though inexact, was of course very near the truth. But it only really took among the bottom-rankers. The higher-level orphans and the extreme Near and Mello partisans thought it outlandish, naive, inconsonant both with human nature and observable reality. They had another tale, observable by Reynie only in their pointed silences when he approached and their pointed eyes on him as he receded. Constance, no doubt, had a better understanding, but – equally well-watched – she kept mum except to grow steadily redder and redder with fury until, at luncheon on Tuesday, she could contain herself no more and positively leapt in Loom's general direction.

“Milligan,” she demanded of him. “What did you think of Milligan?”

“Come again?”

“The blond man. You _were_ introduced.”

“A... a teacher, but not one overfond of paperwork.”

“Oh, well _done_, you've got the size of Milligan. And the blond girl. What did you think of her?”

“Cheerful enough. None too well-dressed.”

“Congratulations,” snarled Constance, “very well observed. And the black boy?”

“Rather a... large vocabulary.” Loom was now deeply aware he was being made an example.

“Any further observations?” Constance paused significantly. “Do you even remember what to call them?”

Loom shuffled his feet uncomfortably.

“Well, whenever I turn my back I keep hearing people carry on whispering about Number Two – who is an absolute _scold_, not a quarter as interesting as any of the other people you met – and the only fact I've caught anyone mentioning in the middle is that she's got a very good digestion. Carry tales if you want, Loom, but if you do, I will not _abide _you acting like Kate or Sticky or Milligan aren't worth the telling.”

“Number Two?” said Reynie, who knew a cue when he saw one. “What are they saying about her?”

“Oh, planning... something. Anything, maybe. I don't think they can even decide if she's working for L or against him, and that'd stand to reason as they've made the whole thing up only today.” She shook her head. “Call themselves a detective school. As soon as a good story catches on, deduction goes straight out the window. All right, deduction is still what's normal here. But then math – a thing I _detest_ –” (by this point, she was clearly shouting for all the orphanage to hear –) “even the math _I_ know never enters into the picture. There are fifty-nine of us. Only three could possibly be L. Second, Mello--”

Liliana hooted and pumped her scrawny fist.

“--_third_, Near,” said Constance, with a gremlin's grin, “and first – I can't believe no one sees this – L himself. Haven't we been studying actuary tables for life insurance in lower-level? Some _trades_ have more _danger _than others and that's why some outlays are higher, but there's no trade that simply doesn't get life insurance... except soldiers, but maybe that's just because the government has it covered. And really old people, if they die for health reasons, but that's not a job. People who clean shark tanks with the sharks still inside get life insurance. People who climb fifty-foot radio towers get life insurance. And the pay-in is always much cheaper than the payout, because the safe bet is it _won't _pay out.”

Constance looked around the room, smugly. “I don't think there are statistical figures on being a really good telecommuting detective, but I think it gives you better odds than coal mining, don't you?”

“We know _that,_” scoffed Liliana.

“You don't act like it,” said Constance, with infinite disdain.

Reynie cleared his throat. “Actually – Flare – I think Liliana _ does _know she's not going to be L. The trouble is only... what else is there for her to be?”

Liliana turned an ugly purple at what, from any other child present, would have been a terrible insult, but, before the first spurt of acid could launch from her lips, turned and fled to her dormitory, not quite before she could burst into tears. Constance followed, abashed.

This was, perhaps, the beginning of the paradigm shift. Reynie could never afterwards be sure. But certainly, Constance's actuary analysis quickly overtook any standing rumors about the Benedict Society as the prime hot-button topic.

If Reynie thought the rumors about Number Two and the rest were forgotten altogether, he was quite disabused when, on the next weekend, eleven Wammy's orphans crowded the townhouse and no one, not even poor bewildered Pati, was safe from the hostile and searching glare of a detective at work. Next letter by Madge that Monday was an exquisitely polite missive from Milligan inquiring whether Roger had intended to install a Banana Spot surveillance device in every room of the townhouse including the water closets and, if such were not Roger's intent, then he requested Mr. Benedict's budget be freed for one set of night-vision goggles, seven smallest-size silence projectors, and a can of black paint.

Nonetheless, the question remained: what if the school of succession were never to be called on for a successor?

Near and Mello themselves relented their struggle not an inch. Over the course of the next two months, Mello would publicly challenge Near to a game of fifteen-minute speed chess, make checkmate in the eleventh minute, and crow insufferably about Near's stumbles for the next fortnight; Near would quietly outperform Mello in every case file, seeming perfectly oblivious to his success but for the gooey and bloodless smile he would turn in Mello's direction at seemingly random intervals; half the pieces in every jigsaw puzzle and all the inner workings of the remote-control cars would go missing one Wednesday morning; and, a week after that, Misfit would discover a keylogger on her sanctum console only after it transmitted to Mello that, rather than puzzle out the McCormack disappearance, she was instant-messaging Nuthatch on the topic of her desperate wish that Mello would fall in love with her. (Despite the obvious enemy activity at work, Misfit fell quite out of favor in Mello's circle thereafter.)

Nor did the partisan strife, as a whole, die down. It might have, but for an unfortunate misstep on Mr. Benedict's part: he had divided the data for the next exercise into three indispensable parts, and made sure half the groups were comprised of one Mello supporter, one Near supporter, and one student from the bottom half of the ranks. The improbable apportionment was detected at once, and whatever sentiments were dampened by the prospect of neither side actually winning were re-kindled by the prospect of foiling an instructor's best-laid plans. The exercise went down in a raging sea of subterfuge and sabotage.

(So far as Reynie was concerned, there was also the simple fact that, if it did come to it, Near would better wield the role of L. With no ill will toward Constance or anyone else, Reynie found, by the end of October, that he had slowly but surely become a part of Near's camp himself.)

But there did seem to be planted, amid all this, a small and quiet understanding. Reynie was no part of it; though he entertained no hopes of becoming L, he did, very much, desire to be a detective; but Matt, Linda, Magritte – those who had long ago given up on the deductive path – were sometimes found together at rec, discussing their wildly varied extracurricular interests, and lower-level students were often caught listening. That Halloween (where it was the Wammy's custom to have no sweets whatsoever, based, Reynie gathered, on some supposition of ceremonially saving them for L), a small girl showed up boxed into a facsimile of a Magritte painting, only to be discovered, when identities were disclosed, as a gleeful Liliana, while Magritte herself had been the silent stage ninja all along.

But two troubling things occurred that November, best related reverse to their chronology.

Second – for, if anyone failed to catch on as late as December, they surely never admitted it afterward – a new order of crime emerged, one which put Constance's assessment of L's safety into considerable doubt.

First, and at least twenty-three days prior, it became clear that, if L actually were to perish, Wammy's House was in no way ready.


	5. The Inglorious Fifth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> October 29-November 5, three weeks before the advent of Kira. Reynie and Mr. Benedict discover an alarming annual tradition at Wammy's and try, with limited success and no help from Constance, to foil it.

**The Inglorious Fifth**

The last case file of October had been a many-thorned nightmare. The murder ostensibly under investigation might plausibly have been committed by any one member of a political family or a fair smattering of their associates, who were most of the time at one another's throats; other great misdeeds of ambiguous legality certainly wove in; and every time a path seemed particularly promising, there was a nondisclosure injunction standing right at the head of the trail.

Roger's attempt to break the thing into five discrete lessons (really tests) was doomed to failure before he began. Reynie's best guess for a lead (ask the second stepbrother – he did not seem to be running a legitimate business, but he certainly was not responsible for the murder and seemed most likely to disclose whatever it was that the victim's father had enacted in Nicaragua ten years before) was impossible to verify by the data at hand.

That such a case coincided with the week of Halloween produced some outcry – not especially fair. True, Magritte devoted extraordinary energy to the affair, and she wasn't the only one, but those who did were seldom those who reliably got to the bottom of the case file. Most (like Reynie and Constance) threw together a cowboy or a bandit princess in fifteen minutes or so. Meanwhile, Near and Mello had not deigned to dress up at all, and they did not seem to be faring much better.

One thing was painfully clear to all: by the time window under observation, even L had not managed to solve the case in a week. Indeed, Reynie began to wonder whether the Katya Petrash case file was meant to be solved at all.

That Wednesday, Rhonda Kazembe returned from giving lessons in formal logic to find a folded note on her office desk which read:

_Good play. It won't work._

It was unsigned, of course, but that was a legal fiction only. She went to find Mr. Benedict.

“I might say Roger planned it this way,” Loom confided in Reynie that same Wednesday, “if only a sentence where _Roger _is the subject and _plan _is the verb had ever been true yet. So. Your crowd?”

( _ Your crowd _ was his term of compromise with Reynie, to forestall tedious, data-bereft arguments about whether it was “Saint Nicholas” or Number Two who was the real mastermind.)

“Depends,” said Reynie. “What's the object of the plan?”

Loom rolled his eyes Wammy-fashion – not a sarcastic gesture; as though he had simply spotted something intriguing on the ceiling. “Oh, one of those save-everybody-from-themselves sorts of things. Got your crowd's earmarks all over it.”

“Sounds plausible, then,” Reynie agreed. “How exactly does the twenty-spider-web collision in the Katya Petrash murder accomplish that?”

Loom whistled low. “This  _ is _ your first year. I'd been beginning to forget.”

Reynie silently waited for an answer.

“No good going on like that, Analog,” said Loom. “No point in being here if you can't find it out for yourself, and no point in _me _being here if you already know and I let you play innocent. But I'll give you a falsifiable conjecture: no one will have solved it by Friday. Roger will keep us in for the weekend. That's how you'll know it's happened.”

Mr. Benedict nodded thoughtfully. “It does clear up a few points, don't you think?”

“Apart from the plain statement that he knows what we intended,” said Roger, smoothing out the paper on his desk, “he appears to know that the idea was yours, not mine.”

Benedict laughed. “No, no, that's _Mello's _new insight!”

“I'd assumed he knew that much by the time we confiscated that,” said Rhonda, waving toward the new bolts in the office wall that held Matt's scooter.

“Not quite,” said Benedict. “Rhonda, you remember that it was you, not I, who received the note – you, who alone have all points of contact in common. You then had several means of proceeding. Had Roger, or you yourself, been the agent behind the Petrash gambit, you would have met Roger directly. Had it been Reynie or Constance, you would have waited for them to emerge from assembly. Had it been Number Two (and that does seem a popular theory of late,) you would have found Madge in the belfry. But what you did was to seek me in the library. Each alternative, easily observable from the main hall. As it stands, the falcon is neglected entirely, and I daresay Number Two will be grateful for it.”

“Meantime,” said Roger, “what have _we _learned?”

“Our plan really _won't _work, as yet,” volunteered Rhonda. “I've seen Mello misrepresent things, but I've never once seen him _bluff_. And he won't start doing it on a point that's bound to be disproven. He's too proud.”

Benedict tapped his nose. “Add to that – given that Mello has not left the grounds, nor does he have any inclination to do so, nor has any confederate done so in his stead – it must mean he is prepared already.” He shook his head. “I know there have been no casualties in the past four incidents, Mr. Ruvie, but only because we have essentially lived at the mercy of his sense of timing. I mislike his regularity, and I particularly mislike the fact that five and three are both significant numbers.”

Loom had precisely predicted the course of the case file, and the announcement that would greet them Saturday morning. It didn't help (as many complained) that it had been the week of Halloween and much energy had gone toward costumes rather than the case – not a fair complaint. Those who had worked hardest on their costumes were seldom those who worked hardest on case files; most, like Reynie and Constance, had thrown together a cowboy or a bandit princess in about ten minutes; and, likely because of the very difficulty of the case file, neither Near nor Mello had deigned to dress up at all. But Roger said only it was a variable entirely out of their hands, and Wammy's students were expected to deal with variables when solving a case.

(“When did he start using rhetorical devices?” said Loom. “Bee in his bonnet, do you think, Analog?”)

On the other hand, Mello did not seem to be in low spirits. He was perfectly happy, even magnanimous. That meant that, though a conscious plan was indeed behind the difficulty of the case file, that plan had not quite come off.

For Reynie had spent sanctum hours Thursday and Friday forsaking the Petrash-Morello family and associates to investigate Loom's hints. Last year's news was not available – it seemed that data in the sanctum was kept exactly five hundred days short of current, and that was another wrinkle worth the pondering – but, when you narrowed it down (as seemed indicated) to the imminent portion of the calendar, the data for 1999, 2000 and 2001 sufficed.

Every year, on November the sixth to the day, the Hampshire police blotter referenced reports during the day of something sounding like a large and non-celebratory explosion in the region or direction of the orphanage, no apparent casualties, investigation inconclusive.

The next explosion, then, was also to be on Guy Fawkes Day, this Wednesday.

However, actually asking classmates had been, just as Loom intimated, a fruitless endeavor – precisely in the way that interviewing witnesses usually was not. Interviewing witnesses was the wrong paradigm, at that. At Stonetown Orphanage, the boy who'd been expelled for selling drugs before Reynie was consistently forming memories was still a recurring legend when he left; March, when a local sandwich franchise would donate their slightly moldy leftovers in a deeply misguided attempt at product placement, was an object of universal dread. Had there been a resident responsible for an annual explosion that no one had yet been able to prevent, Reynie could scarcely imagine talk of anything else in the preceding week.

But at Wammy's, it seemed, the more pressing the subject was, the more universal the silence about it became. Mello's impending Gunpowder Plot was even less spoken of than the week's case file, because, perhaps, it was regarded as simply a higher order of the same class of problem. That would mean comparing notes was just this side of ignominy.

Constance was no exception. After Saturday's assembly, all he got out of her was a canary-eating grin and an assurance that she wasn't being any more helpful to Mello than she was to him.

Not, of course, that Mello needed it.

Therefore, what Reynie did on his next jaunt to the library, seeing only Near's party in congregation, was the only sensible thing left: he conducted himself as though there was no taboo at all.

“He's already got everything he needs, hasn't he,” he said in a fairly audible undertone. “Powder, detonators...”

The heads of Near's fellow admirers turned subtly his way, all anxious to relate what they had come up with, not a one anxious to be the first.

“Detonators three weeks ago, I think,” volunteered Linda at last, putting her charcoal pencil aside. “Remember those remote-control toys he dismembered?”

“Just what I'd been about to say.” By Wizard's face, he sorely wished he actually had said it; being beaten to a punch by Linda was not generally a sign of prowess. “And on a Wednesday, no less.”

“But it's not always powder,” added Zeta, the eldest of them at fifteen. “Could be plastics, magnesium... hasn't been either yet. The first time, when he got Roger's desk, it was just a pressure cooker stuffed with eggs.”

“The remote controls could be hidden anywhere, or with any_one.” _Wizard made a face. _“_Even Misfit. I can't believe she's still hanging on Mello's ratty cuffs, the way he's treating her, but...”

“Mello give her the detonator, after she lowered her firewall like that?” scoffed Zeta. “Not a chance.” 

“That idiot could realize it wouldn't have made a difference if he actually _liked_\--” Liliana caught herself snarling off topic, cleared her throat, and resumed in a much smaller voice. “The remote controls _could_ just be what Mello wants us to think he's using. Timers exist.”

No one wrote the idea off, though it was a powerful first impulse. Mello's plans of attack in old case files were filled with diversions, usually very showy ones that were possible only through the hypothetical availability of L's finances. (Reynie, who had read a few of them himself, had to give Mello credit for nerve but doubted L would ever need a distraction that only a line of armored tanks could provide.)

“What about Near?” said Reynie. “You have to assume _he_ knows what's about to happen.”

“Well,” said Linda, ducking her head, “I – well, I actually asked him again. He thanked me for my concern, but assured me it wasn't necessary.”

“Just like he told you last year,” said Wizard, shaking his head. “Well, after all, it was only the _broken _toy robot.”

“We _are_ sure it's November fifth,” Reynie said. “No early surprises.”

November the fifth exactly. To this, the agreement was unanimous. If Mello didn't bring it off at the appointed time, that was as good as a defeat.

Suddenly, Zeta bit her lip, scrawled something on a blue sticky pad, and passed it around the room starting with Reynie.

_I hate to think of this now, but we're in a library. Nothing hides Banana bugs better than too many hardcover books in one place. Let's reconvene tomorrow after the last go at Petrash. Random spot outside the fence; I'll bring a spinner._

“Well,” said Reynie, passing the note down the line, “Near says he isn't worried. We should trust him.”

“Maybe,” said Zeta. “Can't figure out what else to do.”

Linda sighed as she passed it to Liliana in turn. “Fair enough. Back to  _Pickwick_ for me – debtor's prison. Most counterproductive law apparatus since Jonathan Wild.”

Soon and very naturally, the conversation had turned to the more colorful points of English legal history.

They had lost a day. Only three to go. But Reynie did like the sound of the word  _reconvene. _ It meant that Wammy's orphans had actually convened to begin with.

“Mello's cohorts seem to take a particular dislike to you,” observed Roger. He was standing, gazing not at Mr. Benedict but at the snow streaming past his office window, perhaps in an attempt to soften the statement. 

“They do,” Benedict allowed, “but I am not the target.”

“You have discovered what it is.”

“No,” said Benedict. “That's strictly guesswork. The likeliest guess is Near, as I have said – he arrived three years ago; both bombings since have constituted some form of attack on him – but that boy has possessions tucked in virtually every room of the orphanage. We must approach it from another end.”

“How, then, can you be certain that you are _not _the target?"

Benedict could not resist breaking into a smile. “Have you had a good look at Constance? She's enjoying the proceedings entirely too much.”

Roger snorted. “Still visiting you every evening before bed?”

“She _is _my daughter. And Reynie is speaking with me after class. It would be less conspicuous if he saw me beforehand, but I imagine he doesn't wish to appear overly informed.”

Roger's gaze onto the snow seemed to attain a new focus.

“It seems,” he said, “we can say of Analog that he is _not _enjoying the proceedings. You spoke of him as something of a rallying point? I believe that's Near's crowd rallying behind our facility.”

Benedict hurried to the window.

“Good heavens,” he said. “I don't believe half of them thought to wear hats.”

“We need an electromagnetic pulse generator,” said Zeta, furiously blinking away the snow rushing north into her face. “Only a little one, so it doesn't gum up the sanctum – or the arcade, for that matter. Too bad the locked workshop is practically commons, I'd have put something together if it weren't. We're giving ourselves away _now_, definitely, away out here on such an awful day... but at least no one goes here. Mello's people can't hear what we know.”

“Be sure Mr. Ruvie isn't walking by if you _do _fry any circuits,” Reynie advised, tightening his ear-flaps to block out the wind. “I've never seen him _use_ his cell phone since coming here, but he does seem to take it seriously, doesn't he?”

“He _must _ use it,” said Linda. “For admissions, for a start. And he's mentioned things Watari has said – recent things, and not publicly. But it's rare enough I don't think he's actually been caught at it.”

Wizard smiled as knowingly as he could while jamming his bare fingers into his armpits for warmth. “Simple enough. Given it's only one person he's got a line to.”

Zeta shook her head. “You remember Mr. Wammy's presentation at the Pan-Atlantic Tech Forum in 2000? Just when the Bystander Bombings investigation began in Melbourne?”

“Please,” said Wizard. “Anyone can wear a mask and trenchcoat.”

“Who is being asked to impersonate Watari, then – filling out his coat, mind, and standing up straight – and what reason would they have to do it, and why have the alibi at all, given that we're the only ones on the planet who would look for one in the first place?”

Reynie cleared his throat. “If we're to talk of means, motive and opportunity...”

“Right,” said Zeta sheepishly. “The bomb. How did he get one this year, without needing to disappear over the weekend?”

The conference bubbled up.

“Roger's taken to warning all the firework sellers and farm suppliers about him, but it never helps.”

“He's planning ahead these days, I'm telling you. Remember last Christmas? How there weren't enough crackers to go round?”

“No chance. That stuff's way more volatile than you'd think. But this is Mello. Just account for the laws of physics and it could be _anything_. The things we have in the lab alone... especially if he's decided it's all right to let off toxic gas... and those supplies do dwindle. I've dwindled the talcum powder myself – ruined my nice leather gloves, but did pin down who was using them to go through the steam trunk.”

“Dual-factor, then, and most of the possibilities corrosive? Don't think so.”

“There's this badly-managed feedlot just north of Winchester – augh, ice water in my hair – plenty of saltpeter to be found there.”

“With all the possible ways to b-blow things up, you fancy Mello reduced to digging in d-d-dungheaps?”

“We don't know, then,” said Reynie. “Do you want a jacket, Wizard? I've got a sweater on underneath.”

It took several more minutes of wrangling to become clear that they did not, indeed, know, or at least that every one of the orphans out in the snow adamantly knew something in direct contradiction to someone else. Neither could anyone deduce where and when the bomb could have been built, except that it was _not _the “workshop”, but everybody had a fervent guess. Nor did they know what was likely to be bombed – though there was a general and catching nervous glance toward the red Lego tower peeping through the middle dormitory window – but guesses were even more fervent than before to make up for failure to nail down the last two points.

By the time the third point hit, Reynie's sweater was showing its insufficiencies, the letters N and B had become generally difficult to pronounce, and it suddenly occurred to Zeta that Mello's people had a nearly free field in the building. (This was nothing more than a pretext to go inside; Mello couldn't have been counting on this conference to act, when he managed an explosion every year; but it was fervently accepted by all.)

One last point, on their way in: tailing Mello and associates had, of course, been tried, and had, of course, met with feint and failure.

It was, Reynie concluded, simply too late to observe the facts of the case, however confident the individual bluster might be. The only thing to be done was contain the damage.

How could he possibly couch that, in a way to which a Wammy orphan would listen?

After the usual trick questions in Legal Admissibility on Monday (two days to go, and the utter failure to make headway was beginning to gnaw through Reynie's stomach at night), Linda approached him, looking oddly confidential, her pencil swaying like a loose pendulum under a too-casual hand.

“You know, Analog, I have been talking to Matt lately – I know, I know, but it's nothing to do with this Wednesday. He's the most seasoned one here, you know, and he said that in the old days, there was much more latitude.”

“Nothing to do with Wednesday?” asked Reynie.

“No, but can't we talk about _anything _else? I just wonder what it would have been like, going to town whenever you felt like going so long as you were back for exams. I mean, I know why we don't do that anymore – and I was wrong about Sunday chapel, incidentally, it's just meant as a bit of a check on our worst proclivities. Because A _never_ left Wammy's. _Never _stopped working. And B... towards the end, he was practically living in the hostel. We can't _prove _he was killing people then, but it was looked into and he kept going to squats, or care homes, the sorts of places where death just...”

Linda bit her lip.

“But the rest. I think they might have done all right. We didn't have stipends then, apparently; we earned pocket money by freelance work – any kind, not just detective work, but of course that was popular. And all the time in town - walking St. Swithin's Way, or going after old Quiet Loud, or just having a good tandoori...”

“Quiet Loud,” said Reynie. “Wammy's alumnus, by the name. _Prior_ to A and B?”

“Wammy's?” laughed Linda. “Quiet Loud? No, no, no. Oh, they used to talk about him all the time, but I haven't heard it lately, now I think of it. He left long ago, that the memory of orphans almost runneth not to the contrary. But he was an older boy, lived in Winchester with his family. I don't know how he got such a Wammy-ish name. Neither does Matt; he was quite young then. But _Quiet Loud_ suited his personality, from what I hear. He seems to have been something of a Flambeau.”

“A what?”

“Ahh, I _did_ hold out hopes you'd know your Chesterton.” Linda spun her pencil pensively. “Well, it's like this. He might have been a great detective – if he'd been an orphan. He might have been a master criminal – if he didn't have a league of junior detectives constantly dogging him. As it was, he wasn't really either, but he had a presence, all the same. Cool hand. Wriggled his way into the most unfriendly places, just for the fun of it. Forged a repairman's hand to the letter once – only we'd given the man a dot-matrix printer a few days before.”

Linda sighed in reminiscence of a time she had never seen.

“_That _was the sort of thing the old generation did. It wouldn't do any better for Near and Mello than it did for A and B – so we can't, we simply can't – but I still think I'd like it. You've seen what it's like, having us pent up with nothing but each other most of the week. All the needless obfuscations and run-arounds and puffery. Analog – simply admitting you don't know, every time you _don't _know – do you even sense how _brave _that is?”

Reynie's breath caught.

_Are you brave?_

On a long-ago day that now seemed almost the beginning of his life, he hadn't known how to answer that. It was, in retrospect, the most illuminating question in the exam Mr. Benedict and Number Two had set, but he had lacked the experience to judge the answer. He had known taunts. He had known myriad grown-ups without the slightest idea what was to be done with him. But there had been nothing to be really _brave _about.

In the end, he had written only what he could honestly say at the time: _I hope so._

He had known more than a few occasions for courage since then, and – with the invaluable help of his friends – found his reserves not wanting for the occasion. He knew the feel of the thing in his chest, now, and so in consequence, he knew what Linda spoke of was not really bravery at all.

“It's only the simplest way to find things out,” he said, shrugging. “Given half a chance.”

“But that's just it. Talking of field work. You _didn't_ always have half a chance, did you?” said Linda. Her eyes had widened just slightly, like a hunter seeing her quarry in sight. “We're _dediugsim_, you said, night after your first lessons. Tell me... what _was_ L.I.V.E.?”

Reynie would no doubt have told her, if not for the phrase she had invoked. _Are you_ _brave? _It was a seed crystal for an answer coming together in his mind – an answer, Reynie had no doubt, that would make him deeply unpopular.

“I have to think. I'll tell you after Wednesday.”

As it happened, there was nothing very special behind the old moniker of Quiet Loud. He had been called Quiet because that was his temperament, and as for Loud, that was simply his surname.

But, though Stephen Loud had long since relinquished that catchy sobriquet for his actual name, which made a much more presentable deskplate, he was, in fact, more quiet than ever. There had been a certain subtle braggadocio in his youthful exploits – which, he had no doubt, did not hinder the local ragamuffins in foiling his mischief. In the CIA, professional pride was to stay just that: professional.

But this week – as per the spring's instructions – he was on leave.

It could only have been Mirage or Lye who gave his contact information away. Still on telephone terms with him after all these years, they, like what seemed a staggering many of the orphans, had found similarly illustrious careers (with similarly presentable nameplates): a formidable white-hat hacker for a five-star cybersecurity firm, and a respected researcher in animal pathologies. But in their telephone chats, Mirage, Lye and Quiet Loud lived on. True to the old form, neither Mirage nor Lye gave any indication they had passed on his phone number to the younger generation, but both, when questioned, exhibited the stone-wall blankness of – well, of any of his higher-ups he could care to name when similarly pressed.

What changed and what stayed the same, Loud mused, was never what you expected. In comparison with his Winchester days, Wammy's orphans were virtually living under house arrest – yet, despite a lack of outsiders to impress, they retained the same mad love of nicknames; they even continued to favor the middle of the alphabet. And if their overall sense of one-upmanship seemed to have intensified in the process... well, that  _was _ what you'd expect, and Loud would have been deeply disappointed to see it vanished.

He had, of course, taken the opportunity to visit his family. But standing in snowshoes behind the wrought-iron fence of Wammy's House, binoculars and notepad in hand, he felt he had really come home.

So absorbed was Mr. Benedict in carefully framing and balancing a new exercise wherein the upper half were to be ranked on their ability to pass their knowledge to the lower half, he might not have bothered to turn for the footsteps entering his cubicle had they not sounded the distinctive pattern belonging to Reynard Muldoon.

“Ah, Reynie. Your excursion outside the gates drew our attention yesterday. I take it your endeavor was a fruitful one?”

“No,” said Reynie, looking distinctly hangdog. “We all know there's a bombing this Wednesday, and we're all thinking about it, but no one has any idea what actually needs doing. At least not in Near's crowd. And Near himself seems... I don't know... willing to absorb the hit. Mello's crowd seem to be simply a giddier type of clueless, but Constance seems it no less than the rest, so who can know? The second-guessing on that front could go on forever. All the other second-guessing certainly _does _go on forever.”

He took a deep breath.

“Mr. Benedict, we need to evacuate. Preferably to Southampton – that's _definitely _out of the range of any detonator. Leave no time to get our things, so there's no jumping the gun. Room us in groups, just small enough to keep track of without leaving any of Mello's people to themselves.”

Benedict nodded, but not without concern. “Two of the explosions have left substantial fires behind them. Have you, then, ruled out the possibility of a timer?”

“No. But it'd be set for the fifth. We have a day.” In spite of himself, Reynie smiled. “With Madge still in the belfry, it's only a trivial matter of bomb disposal.”

Milligan was more than capable of bomb  _disposal_ , but this summons was chiefly a matter of bomb  _detection_ , and that was not quite the same thing. Bombs whose whereabouts were adequately accounted for were sufficient call for a man of his talents. Nor could he professionally equip himself for the operation on such short notice.

And so the first course of action he took, after getting Madge a few crickets for a snack, was to deeply alarm Sticky Washington by inquiring whether he thought he might fabricate a few samples of common low explosives.

“I've thought of inquiries like this, if I do become a library,” said Sticky, scratching furiously above his right ear. “I imagined it would become imperative to say no and refund whatever fee I levied, but I didn't count on the possibility of _you _asking me, and now there's the dilemma of partiality to contend with.”

“He can do it,” Kate translated, “and it's to stop someone who stuck a bomb in Reynie's school, so it's not really a dilemma, Sticky.”

Sticky sat absolutely still while he processed this new information. “I had thought this business was _over_,” he said finally. “Has Martina Crowe shed her shaky repentance and acquired a passport?” (Martina Crowe was the most vicious foe of the Benedict Society not behind bars.)

“Don't worry, it's not Martina, we're not talking to _her_,” said Kate. “We're only talking to S.Q., once a month, and he doesn't know we're in England, and Martina Crowe is the kind of girl who needs to be _told _things before she knows them.”

“It appears to be a local problem only,” said Milligan, “but a bomb is no respecter of personal history. Please, Sticky – we have little more than thirty hours to act, and I assure you there is no need to employ compression. Raw chemicals are all we need.”

Sticky sighed in resignation. “I'll warn Mom that Mrs. Perumal is not to smoke in our bedroom. Because of a chemical experiment.”

Milligan smiled and clapped Sticky on the back. “Would it be all right with you if Kate had a new dog?”

Whatever grudging respect Loom had accrued for Reynie by ruminating over Number Two's nonexistent intrigues was thoroughly doused, and by a bad stroke of luck, Reynie's own plan had left the two of them in the same dreary, yellowing Southampton hotel room. Matt, Wizard, Polaris and little Wiggin in his blue footie pajamas kept their own counsel while Loom sporadically hurled cutting remarks on Reynie's.

Constance, too, was deeply disappointed in him for cutting short the festivities. The moment their omnibus led the second one into city limits, she filled the cabin with a raucous recital:

_Should any remember this Gunpowder Plot  
_ _That livened up many a Fifth of November,  
_ _Which one boy I might mention has plainly forgot,  
_ _Then fondly they'd wish that Mello had sought  
_ _To blow the whole school to a few scattered embers--  
_ _Should any remember _ this  _Gunpowder Plot?  
_ _We ran like dumb cowards, and what for? For naught!  
_ _Nobody's been burned or knocked down or dismembered,  
_ _Which one boy I might mention has plainly forgot..._

At the very least, no one could now make the mistake of blaming Rhonda or Mr. Benedict for the evacuation. But, in the face of the deadly cold silence radiating from Mello the whole way to Southampton, Reynie could not see that as an unmarred blessing.

In this fourth hour of confinement, Loom had lapsed back into a sulking pretense of sleep that fooled no one, and after five unbroken minutes, Wiggin took the opportunity to clear his throat.

“Linda said,” Wiggin began with an eager nervousness, “Linda said you were going to say what really happened. With Number Two and the evil school and all. And we're away from the bomb now.” He looked at Reynie with wide, expectant eyes.

Wizard laughed. “Wiggin, I think Linda wants to hear from Analog  _ privately.  _ If you catch what I mean,” he added, and waggled his eyebrows as though it would help a six-year-old boy get the message.

This interpretation of Linda's inquiry had not occurred to Reynie, and he realized with dismay that it could actually be true.

“Hmm,” said Wizard, frowning. “And Zeta told her to go for it.”

Reynie devoutly wished such a sensitive subject had not come up in the vicinity of Loom and Polaris. Actually, given the circumstance of this lodging arrangement, Matt, watching them from the doorframe he'd nonchalantly propped himself up against, wasn't precisely trustworthy either.

He closed his eyes. Truth was the only course. Followed by a good, hard subject change.

“Linda's just a friend. But a friend. She's a good person. May I guess she didn't care for television when she first arrived at Wammy's?”

Polaris snorted. “As though she couldn't have told you as much. New students  _ love _ palming off simple information as deduction.”

Wizard cocked his head, extravagantly sideways as was his quirk of choice. “But she  _ did _ hate it. Irrationally. Said it was like blackflies buzzing in her head, no matter the signal or the channel. She's over that, but the telly is in storage now, so much good it does.” 

“She'd have got over it about three years ago,” said Reynie quietly. “When--”

A dramatic rustling announced that Loom had once again thrown his blanket off him to the floor.

“If we kept a timetable for the coming and going of all the neurotic tics at Wammy's,” he growled, “we'd never finish a case file again. But all you're being asked is why you don't _fancy_ her. Haven't you had enough stupid evasion games for one day?”

“He likes Misfit,” said Polaris, as though it were a perfectly obvious matter of record. “I'm surprised you haven't caught on, Wizard.”

“That can't be accurate,” said Wiggin, wounded. “Girls are the worst and Misfit is the worst girl of all. It's not in Analog's character.”

Matt leant just that bit more theatrically against the doorframe. “Fool me forty-six times... yeah, the shame's still on you, Polaris. Tell a little truth now and again if you actually want to fool anyone twice.” He nodded with the sagacity of one who didn't much care one way or another. “Still, you're onto something. Linda, she's bookish and sanctimonious and... normal-looking, you'd think Analog would see _ something _ in her. Either there's someone else, or he just doesn't like girls.”

Reynie knew full well Matt was capable of spinning either scenario, or both, out of whole cloth, and tonight, he was probably in the mood for it. He opened his mouth to say so and thereby forestall it--

\--only to hear a rapping at the window behind his bed.

A grinning Kate in a charcoal-gray hoodie waggled her fingers from the windowframe where she had wedged herself. Reynie hastily unlatched the window.

“Kate!” Reynie pointedly ignored the significant looks from the other boys. “I take it the operation went well?”

Kate gave a terrific jostle to the rope she'd climbed that dislodged the grappling hook from the roof, then bundled it back into her bucket. “Better than you could imagine. We identified a bomb-sniffing dog at the pound, and now he's with us to stay. I'm calling him Sir Jowlington. Milligan's taking him home to eat, not even a  _little _ bit injured. I insisted on going, just so there was someone to carry him if he was (and the dog too, I guess, if Milligan's reflexes  _really _ fell down on the job), but no need this time!”

Loom stared. “You hitchhike here, then?”

“Oh,” said Kate, flicking a stray hair out of her face, “I just found a car going the right direction, hopped onto a solid part of the roof and lay flat. At wrong turns – off again, or straight to another car. I'm getting a little big for crawling over ceiling tiles, so I had to pick up _something _to replace it.” She paused thoughtfully. “The other cars don't honk anywhere near as much when I do it at night; I guess they mostly don't see me.”

“What happened with the bomb?” said Wiggin eagerly.

“It was silver fulminate strips. Just the stuff they put in New Year's crackers, you know, but a _lot_ of them. Milligan was impressed at the array, I can tell you. That's not what Sir Jowlington was trained for, but close enough that he could cope. A sealed-off bit of plastic pipe in the leg of someone's _bed_, Reynie. It was on a timer, by the way, not a remote detonator, but you were right, that's nothing Milligan can't handle.”

“Where was the bed?” asked Wizard, hushed.

“Second dormitory from the left, if you go by the main door. Which I'm sure you mostly do. In fact, we thought it wisest to do it ourselves this time, especially with Sir Jowlington along.”

Kate might as well have uttered no qualifications at all, for all that anyone paid attention. The room stood transfixed by only one fact: the second dormitory from the left. That was  _Mello's _ dormitory _._

Constance hadn't been angry with him, he realized. She had just been  _disappointed_ . She'd actually imagined Reynie would enjoy the show.

Reynie realized it even as he spoke:

“This can't get out.”

“_What?_” said Wizard.

“There's a 36% chance that was _my_ bed,” said Matt. (This was probably a rough estimate, done up as a less-than-round number for color, but it hewed much more to the actual likelihood than most percentage-based estimates Reynie had heard at Wammy's.) “Of all the wild school-days stories not to tell...”

“We _are _assuming that Mello wouldn't put a bomb in his own dormitory,” said Reynie.

“Bit late in his career to make it a false flag,” agreed Polaris.

Matt had already as good as admitted it when he quoted his percentage, and no one else stepped up to argue. Of  _course _ it wasn't Mello.

Reynie took a deep breath. “Okay. As things stand, Near knows he's beaten Mello at his own game. And as far as Mello knows, his winning streak is unbroken – or would be, if not for this evacuation. Let's keep it that way, so they leave the rest of us in peace for a while. Kate – on your way up, did you happen to see a boy with very pale hair? White pajamas, probably sitting in the middle of the floor?”

“Not really on my way _up _at that point_, _but I did see a boy like that. Ground floor, just three windows to the west of you.”

Reynie examined the windows, then the emergency floor plan (he realized he hadn't noticed until Kate brought it up that their room, 108, was on the south side of the building.)

“Kate, when Milligan gets here, tell him to ask for Near in Room 010 before he does anything else. Wherever he says the bomb was before it was tampered with, that's the location Milligan relays to Roger.”

Wiggin scratched his nose. “What if he simply calls Roger's room?”

“He won't, if he has any way of being there himself,” said Kate. “He never even installed a land line at our old farmhouse. It was deliriously peaceful. In the end there  _ was _ that major crisis Rhonda couldn't call us about, but that was for the best, too, wasn't it?”

She stuck out her tongue at Reynie.

“That'll at least show everyone  _ else  _ what it's like to have the middle of someone else's adventure dangled in front of them with no explanation. I'd do it to you if I could, but things at the townhouse have been pretty uneventful, really.”

Kate looked at Reynie with eager expectation, but the absolute impossibility of explaining key facts – the reason Mello was tacitly permitted to set bombs every year, the nature of the rivalry between Near and Mello in the first place – might as well have projected a wall of silence between them.

Wizard cleared his throat. “What if Near lies about the location of the bomb? I mean, if he said it was in the newest chocolate shipment, would this Milligan character know any better?”

Loom scowled anew at that thought.

“Near can lie,” said Matt. “But he can't back it up, not in midair like that. Just have Milligan lead by asking a detailed explanation of how it was done.”

“And then have him tell it to  _ us, _ ” said Wiggin fervently.

Wizard sighed. “I'd ask the same, but--” he jerked his head at Matt-- “too great a temptation.”

“Okay. I think we can move forward.” Reynie held out his hand. “Are we all agreed to silence?”

Loom nodded stiffly, stepped forward, and vaguely brushed Reynie's hand. As much as he detested Reynie's actions of the evening, he would  _ not  _ be the reason Mello was publicly humiliated.

Wizard abruptly decided that, as Near's only qualifying representative in the room, he'd better be second, and clasped Reynie's hand. Matt laid his on next, then Polaris (for whatever that was worth), then Wiggin. Loom then put his hand properly on the other five for the sake of symmetry.

Kate hung her hand over the others, a wistful and hurt look on her face.

Reynie couldn't quite manage to look her in the eye. “It's good to see you, Kate. I mean, you just averted a lot of trouble for the school, but I meant to say I've  _ really _ missed your dramatic entrances. Look – just to balance it out – Curtain stays  _ our  _ secret. All right?”

Kate's confusion cleared up at once, and her hand descended on the others with a powerful smack.

They had needed to book yet another hotel room for the occasion, but being what it was, this particular orphanage apparently rested squarely on Quillsh Wammy's nigh-inexhaustible pile of money, and Roger Ruvie thought nothing of the booking.

“Don't you want to ask how I knew the relevant information in the first place?” asked Near, as he made another carefully considered poke at the floor half an inch away from where he had made the last.

“Whyever not?” said Milligan. “As the only one privy to this, I see no reason we can't both make the most of it.”

“First, you were wrong,” said Near. “This  _ isn't  _ the first year I beat Mello. This is just the first year I had the manpower to prove it. I was taken completely off guard the first year, no point denying it, but I could reasonably assume I'd be the target in the future. Rest assured I have a comprehensive knowledge of the shelf life of electronic toys as compared with the official factory claims. Therefore, in October of 2002, when the RoboMax X-500 ceased to operate three months before the proper end of its lifespan, I could confidently predict that that would be the target.”

He nodded with grim thoughtfulness and made his next poke some four inches away from where he had made the last few.

“Out of curiosity, may I ask why you are poking at the floor?”

“Invisible Go,” Near explained. “Anyway, after that there were rumblings. Mello had  _ always  _ planted the bomb very late in the game, you see. This time, there were witnesses, but they hadn't quite grasped what they saw. Suddenly, everyone was formulating ways to dog his steps unceasingly as the end of October approached. If I heard them talk about it, it was safe to assume Mello did, too, and that meant he was going to act early. Am I right in guessing he used a cell phone clock for a timer? DC charger?”

“Yes,” said Milligan, startled. “But wouldn't your... manpower... have told you that?”

Near began twirling a finger in his hair as he absently poked his next move. “Communication was limited. I was the target, remember? I speculate because Misfit started a few fights and indiscretions around those phones – Misfit is usually the one Mello uses for social plays.

“Or was,” he added. “I hope I've fixed that. She's a totally unworthy ally. No interest in facts at all.

“But thanks to Misfit and everyone who took her bait, the phones all ended up confiscated – except one, which was supposed to have been broken before all the warfare began. Mello kept that one back, unused, but still operative under Roger's two-year contract. Poor Roger,” he said, with a rubbery smile. “None of those contracts will expire until February 2005.”

By the glow in his eyes, either he was getting to a good part of the tale or his ensuing poke flipped a good many invisible Go pieces.

“In the meantime, I asked Barrett – that's the digital forensics instructor – to drive me out to town one Saturday afternoon, because I had a mind to get in touch with some old alumni. I'm surprised no one noticed I was gone, but I think they take it for granted that I _don't _leave, except for Sunday chapel. I'll admit it makes me very uncomfortable. But I went anyway, I contacted the alumni, and the alumni got me the contact I needed.

“I knew the actual preparation of the explosives was unfolding on the afternoon the white mice were released. Just before your people arrived, wasn't it, Mr. Milligan?”

“Nothing I've heard,” said Milligan, “but I will take your word for it.”

“Well, no one knew a thing about Nicholas and the others at the time. But there _was _one known quantity on that plane: the pilot and sometime munitions lecturer, Kyle Block. As far as Block is concerned, Mello is the only pupil worth considering. Last January, just after Wiggin arrived from Thailand, I saw Mello poring over a pilot's license test manual, so it's not much of a leap to say they'd been in contact. Then, just in advance of Block's return, a sudden chaos in the building, detachments of Wammy's kids scouring the building in every direction – with Mello, it would turn out, in none of them.

“But there was a hitch in the plan: the copilot messed Block up. I'm not certain he meant to – perhaps Mello replenished his stock, but the timetable makes it more likely that whatever materials Mello had left in the hangar, remained there – but he happened to pay a small visit to Roger, from which I could deduce already that that was what he did. All the better. I knew Mello would return, and it was a fair guess Block would also return, probably _not_ directly by plane. I took one rec period to post a Banana Spot by the hangar's pedestrian door. I probably planted the bug a little late for Mello to return, but down the line, when I reviewed the footage for September 22, I caught Block coming in with a heavy satchel, and handing it over to Mello when he re-emerged – just ten minutes before rec.”

Near shrugged. “So, the week of the big event, by prearranged Lego signal, I informed my contact that the bomb would have been no bigger than a breadbox and planted during recreation: that is, in the classrooms or the bedrooms. He took care of it on the third, and left a note in the hollow of my Lego tower:

“_It was your bedpost. Switched with his, if you don't mind._”

Milligan scratched his chin. “ _Did_ you mind?”

“I'd have preferred he disarmed the bomb,” allowed Near, “but it's not as though I could have done anything about it.”

Near carefully considered the Go board only he could see.

“I think I'll leave it here, with white in dominance. We'll all be back as soon as everything's hashed out with Nicholas, and that'll probably leave a few hours before we light the bonfire.”

“Very well, Near,” said Milligan, rising from his chair. “It was a remarkable story and I'm grateful for the telling of it – all the more because there was no practical demonstration.”

“Oh,” added Near, flashing Milligan a childlike smirk just as he made to open the door. “When I said you'd hash it out with Nicholas, I meant Roger, of course. Happy Guy Fawkes Day.”


	6. Tall and Black as Rouen Steeple

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The emergence of Kira brings a wave of anxiety through Wammy's House and places new demands on Mr. Benedict.

**Tall and Black as Rouen Steeple**

The ensuing three weeks were painful ones. Reynie was forced to rebuff Linda's affections and go two weeks before she decided to be friends again, to weather Loom's incessant wrath, and, worst of all, to experience life as the object of Mello's specific disfavor. Though Constance continued to stand by him, it would not have been discernible except by her telepathy.

No doubt the bad state of social affairs would have lasted considerably longer, if not for the great events that were to unfold.

Though that November the twenty-eighth would go down as a significant day in world history, not a word of it graced the morning Telegraph that Reynie read with Kate, Sticky and Linda on Saturday the twenty-ninth. The evening Telegraph would show the first ripple on the waters; by the morning of Sunday the thirtieth, heart attacks among high-profile criminals would actually secure a place on the front page, below the fold; and, by the time Reynie and Constance found Mr. Benedict sitting beside them in Winchester Cathedral wearing a green plaid suit and an expression of utmost gravity, it was not difficult to guess the cause of this departure from routine.

“Ten in the morning,” he muttered at the townhouse dining table toward the end of the morning, fretting at his sleeves. “It is, all in all, commendable that S.Q. be no longer beholden to an Executive's punctuality, but to rise at ten in the morning – three in the afternoon, Greenwich time –”

Number Two pushed him a cup of tea, conspicuously silent regarding hopes for Ledroptha Curtain's well-being.

“We've studied a lot about induced heart attacks,” said Reynie to Kate in an undertone, so as not to disturb Mr. Benedict's vigil. “It's practically the only way left to poison someone without going detected, and it can get inventive. But the ones who died at large. How does that fit?”

“Are you asking _me?_”

“Rhetorical,” guessed Sticky.

Constance sat at the corner of the table, propped up on books and scowling at a slowly-diminishing plate of buttered noodles. When she scowled with particular fierceness, it was invariably followed by Mr. Benedict closing his eyes for a brief time. Reynie wondered what their conversation could be.

In the kitchen, Miss Perumal was holding forth to Moocho, Milligan and her mother that hoping society would be improved through murder was something like hoping dresses would be more beautiful once the scissors that cut them were worn dull as butter-knives. It all boiled down to the quality of the manufacturer, she declared before rushing to the countertop to defend the pumpkin pie batter from the new Great Dane, Sir Jowlington, filled with eagerness and pep and thoroughly oblivious to the prevailing mood.

Linda was not quite comfortable taking her leave just because the conversation had grown tense and much less relevant to her than to everyone else in the household, but she was standing apart, sketching the autumn-blasted lawn on the other side of the window.

It was in this desultory way that the time inched from eleven-thirty to one and a bit beyond, before Linda suddenly turned from her third window and asked, in a strangely restrained voice:

“Um, Number Two. May I ask whether you apply foundation every morning?”

Number Two pursed her lips, deciding whether and how to answer such a grossly impolite query from the one visitor who had thus far refrained, so Reynie simply answered, “Yes, she does. I've only seen her without it once, and – well, there was a lot more than a lack of makeup at play, just then. But she definitely does use makeup. Why?”

“Oh I can't say it in front of all these people,” said Linda, “but—” She flushed suddenly. “Analog, we should go outside.”

Reynie followed Linda to the door with a strange trepidation. Constance followed, looking as though she might burst if she didn't, but she kept Kate and Sticky back.

Indeed, the figure standing by the hedge, sallow, sleepless and wide-eyed, did bear some resemblance to Number Two escaped from extended captivity. But what was more pronounced, in Reynie's eyes, was the tong-like way he held a little sheaf of paper before him, and the deep slouch, and the rumpled cotton shirt and jeans above ratty sneakers with no socks, and the frosting stain on the cuff, and the all-encompassing stare. Everywhere he looked, Reynie saw the unmistakable stamp of Wammy's House.

“It was about time, Linda,” said the young man. “I might as well have gift-wrapped this one for you, but we'll take it.”

Constance elbowed Reynie heartily in the pelvis as a dozen loose pieces in his head suddenly snapped into a brilliant whole.

This man didn't  _ bear  _ the stamp of Wammy's. He  _ was  _ the stamp of Wammy's. Reynie was standing across the yard from L himself.

“I'm,” began Reynie, utterly lost for words. “I'm... Analog. Reynie Muldoon. I'm not sure which you'd know me as. Is it Mr. Benedict you...”

“Yes, please,” said L tonelessly, looking down and off to the side in the vague direction of Constance's face, “I would indeed like to speak with Mr. Benedict. And Flare as well, hello, Flare. And Analog--” here he whipped his face up toward Reynie, a somewhat unfocused look in his eyes-- “_try _to value your life, won't you?”

“Value my--”

“You'll know presently,” said L simply, before turning back in the direction of Constance. “I'd ask you and Nicholas to get in the car if I didn't have a shrewd idea how you might take it. Just get him outside. I'll confer with you two – and only you two – over there.” He indicated a particularly bleak and flat stretch of grass on the commons. Reynie saw the logic: in such an open space, even Kate couldn't get close enough to hear an undertone undetected.

“Whisperer stuff again,” said Constance, her voice now quite sour.

“You know it's more complicated than that,” said L, an oddly teasing look on his face.

“I'm not trying to know anything right now,” said Constance, which meant she had been expending a great amount of psychic energy indeed in her exchange with Mr. Benedict. Typically, for all her eagerness to skim the top of her classmates' heads, she didn't start getting headaches until around four. “But if it's just me and Mr. Benedict, then it's about Whisperer stuff. Can't anyone _ever_ give it a rest?”

“Analog, Linda,” said L loudly, opening his mouth wide to match, “please go in and get Nicholas.”

“Can you believe it?” asked Linda as they re-entered, half winded with sheer starstruck giddiness. “Can you actually believe--”

Reynie cleared his throat. “Mr. Benedict – there's someone outside who wants to speak with you and Constance. I'm pretty sure we can trust him,” he added, for the benefit of anyone who might have similar misgivings about Whisperer stuff.

“Might it wait until after three?” said Mr. Benedict weakly. “Tell him it is of the utmost urgency that I contact an old acquaintance--”

“Your brother's still alive,” said L's voice from beyond the door. “That's one of the things we need to discuss, actually. Shall we?”

“You must really have overexerted yourself,” commented L, crouched on the dead grass and frequently dipping his fingers into the dish containing six eighths of Moocho's pumpkin pie, “not to _try _reading my mind. I'd prepared a few fairly disturbing surface images to thwart you, but it appears they won't be necessary.”

“I could be lying,” said Constance.

“Trust me, I'd be able to see it on your face.”

“Constance has spent the past hour and a half attempting to convey to me a feeling of peace,” explained Benedict, who unlike the other two had availed himself of an outdoor chair. “With small success, given how little of it she felt herself. I have instead been struck by a strong and unnatural _desire _to feel peaceful, which only aggravated my disquiet... and that's why I permitted it, Constance. To be at peace without reason would have been a lie.”

“Yes, the brand new suit's a dead giveaway as to your feelings,” said L, smacking his lips around a pumpkin-coated finger, “but of course Ledroptha Curtain is wearing orange, not green, at the moment.” He tapped the sheaf of papers pinned under the pie tin. “Ledroptha Curtain _is _his real name?”

“His first and only legal name. I am quite sure of it.”

“Mr. Benedict's parents were field researchers,” explained Constance as L made short work of the rest of the pie, “and that means _dirt poor. _So when they turned out to have two babies instead of one, there were these cousins, the Curtains. We know nothing really about them, except they had valid genealogies and bought some houses and died early but not when Curtain was a baby. Dad imagines they were awful, because he likes beating himself up. Maybe they were, but anyway Curtain is way, _way_ past old enough to be responsible for his own actions.”

Benedict's lips twitched. He could hear the echoes of his own lectures to Constance in that last sentence.

L prodded at his lower lip, seeming pensive. “The extent of said actions not being widely known, of course, beyond a few oblique secret memoranda circulated on the American eastern seaboard. Then it is possible that Curtain's actions may be known to Kira as kidnapping, rather than an out-and-out bid for world conquest. Does Ledroptha Curtain have access to television?”

“It has been ruled inadvisable,” said Benedict mildly.

“I see,” said L. “What do you think of the Whisperer itself as Kira's mechanism?”

“It's Curtain's mechanism,” said Constance, “and he didn't trust _anybody_, and we never knew any girl named Kira.”

“Oh, that's just the popular nickname for the agent or agents behind the recent heart attacks,” said L almost offhandedly, “so you'll--”

Benedict sat bolt upright in his chair. “There is no chance of it.”

“Hmm?”

“There was no lack of outside interest in the Whisperer, but I can assure you I rebuffed it, and easily, as the only one beside my brother capable of operating or understanding it. Oh, and there is the small matter that the Whisperer's capacity was strictly bound to the realms of thought and memory – and not total even there, as anyone I have restored might tell you. You will note that no missing agent, the indefatigable Milligan included, has actually been killed by the technology.”

“Given Curtain's position, this scenario assumes the technology has, nonetheless, been rebuilt by a different party. According to your briefs, Curtain seems to have had delusions that his rulership would guard the world against... well, take your pick. Disease, mismanagement, any economic system known to man... occupational hazard of being a genius; I'm only fortunate I found my niche early. In any case, I think he would refer to his mode as _persuasion_.”

Constance snorted. “That didn't stop him planning to kill us all the next year and it wouldn't have stopped his Ten Men at the time, but they had to use harpoons and things, not brainsweepers. Even when I cured Mr. Benedict's narcolepsy, it was about the thoughts that set it off, not physiological stuff. You're just sore because the Whisperer fooled you for years and you didn't even know it.”

“Perhaps so.” L crinkled his nose. “I _really_ doubt that Ledroptha Curtain could know my name or face – which Kira, it seems, cannot operate without, please take that into account, Nicholas – but no, there's no question I was affected. Sore? Yes, I guess you could say that.” 

L sighed.

“There's a definite family resemblance between Curtain's crimes and Kira's, but it seems there's no way of actually identifying the one with the other. Pity that you two happen to be the only genuine paraphenomenal witnesses I have on call; I've just about exhausted the more conventional scenarios.”

With that, L stood, leaving the pie tin on the ground and casually crumpling Curtain's records into his pocket.

“Look,” said Constance, scrambling to her feet, “is Curtain going to die, or isn't he?”

L shrugged with a nonchalance that was entirely counterfeit. “It seems that'll depend on how fast I catch Kira, won't it?”

“Well?” said Kate, taking her spyglass back.

Sticky screwed up his face and arranged his memory of Mr. Benedict's mouth movements into a viable lip-reading.

“There is a male who has had only one legal name. Something has been ruled inadvisable. He then spoke of several things we know about Curtain and the Whisperer, but what markedly stood out was that he was assuring our guest that the Whisperer did not, in fact, have the capacity to kill.”

“So that pie thief down there thinks Curtain is looking like the heart attack_ murderer?_”

“If so, Mr. Benedict disagrees, which seems consonant with the facts he listed.”

“Well, I sure hope he's right,” said Kate. She huffed out her breath. “Bad enough that _Reynie_ is having a spell on the list of people we have to give the slip.”

* * *

A haunting refrain wafted up the stairs as Reynie descended to the commons.

“_Baby, baby, naughty baby--  
__Hush, you squalling thing, I say!  
__Peace this instant-- peace, or maybe  
__Bonaparte might pass this way.  
__Baby, baby, he's a giant,  
__Tall and black as Rouen steeple,  
__And he breakfasts, dines, rely on't,  
__Every day on naughty people.”_

“That's a little darker than your usual, Flare,” said Linda, who was sitting by her side, meticulously shading a spidery hand held in a stiff gesture of greeting. The backdrop looked suspiciously like the hedge by the townhouse.

“It's supposed to be dark, it's a nursery rhyme,” said Constance. “Didn't you ever read _Gran'fa Grigg Had A Pig_?”

“I can't say I've ever heard of that. There were a fair number of books at Wammy's in Liverpool, but mainly _new _books, like it is here. Was that an old one?”

“I won't say one way or the other,” said Constance, “but I will say the illustrator just couldn't _stop_ drawing Teddy Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.”

Picture books. That reminded of Reynie of something he had long forgotten to ask, regarding a class of books that did not reside on shelves at Wammy's House proper.

“Did you have _The Eleventh Hour, _then, Linda? In Liverpool?”

“Naturally,” said Linda. “That was my entrance exam, as it happened.”

Reynie cocked his head. “They said you'd get to go to Winchester if you figured out who stole the feast?”

Constance abruptly stood up to leave. Having seen enough of her real anger, Reynie recognized the sham and made a mental note to steel himself for another dose of evacuation revenge.

“No, no, our entrance exams aren't quite like that, it's more about bursts of genius that just happen to happen around the person who's been tasked with keeping an eye out for them. I was a bit alarmed, actually – Mr. Hornbeam only ever phoned Mr. Wammy to tell him the most _gruesome _local stories, so to hear him calling just to tell him I saw the mice...” She looked up from her sketchpad suddenly. “Then you didn't have an entrance exam yourself? That's actually true?”

In accordance with projections, a spitball then hit Reynie in the back of the head.

“You ever doubt that, Linda?” said Loom's voice. “Can't tell the earmarks of nepotism when you see them? Dullard in a sharp firm... running snivelling to daddy at the first sign of trouble...”

“There was an exam,” Reynie told Linda as though no interruption had occurred. “Not for Wammy's, but Number Two is a brutal test-setter. And _Eleventh Hour, _I solved when I realized that the first word in the cryptogram had to be _congratulations, _and _congratulations _has two A's in it, but that's trusting in messages--” 

“No, perish the thought, you got where you are _fair and square, _your connection with the senior staff is just a _coincidence, _don't they all say it?”

“\--not using my head. I wish I'd been able to figure it out from Karnak. I never even _considered _your way.”

“Oh there are worse things than sitting in the commons on a Monday,” sang Loom, his fine voice thrown all out of chord by his need to underline the jeer. “There are worse things than sitting in the commons, being painted by your lover, though you'd rather have a gibbon--”

Linda mutely held out her sketchbook for Loom's inspection.

Loom opened his mouth, probably to issue some cutting remark concerning hands human or gibbon, but his tongue had not formed half a syllable before he registered whose hand it was.

“He does look a bit like Number Two, Loom. Thank you for the hint.”

When Loom spoke again, it was in quite another voice.

“They say he actually _talked _with Mello last night. About a case – I mean a _current_ one. And now he's waving to _you..._” Loom looked fixedly at an unremarkable spot on the ground. “It's these heart attacks, isn't it?”

Reynie swallowed as he recalled a snatch from the nursery rhyme Constance had chosen for the occasion.

_Bonaparte might pass this way._

“I believe I begin to understand the founding philosophy of Wammy's House,” Mr. Benedict told Roger, gratefully seated in one of the padded chairs that had been placed before the desk. It was on his mind, since they had destroyed the student records; the quirk of an eidetic memory, perhaps.

Roger steepled his fingers wearily. “I doubt there's anything philosophical in it.”

“There always is,” Benedict assured him. “When it comes to a great decision, one can hardly keep philosophy out of it. Pragmatism, for instance, is eminently philosophical.” (And it was a dark pragmatism that L practiced, making such extensive provision for his death. Benedict had never imagined the great detective to be so young.) “But I no longer believe Wammy's is founded on pragmatism only. In our conversation, there was reference to the temptation that daunts a person of talent – the temptation to expect the whole world to fall in line with one's great intellect.”

Roger sat back. “He believes Kira is one person, then.”

“Actually, he spoke in reference to my brother. But Ledroptha is an exception. Rather, an exceptional application of the greater rule. He applied greater ambition, and vastly greater patience, than most of the kind. More often, I have seen such genius expect the world to accommodate it... only to shatter when the world stubbornly refuses to comply. And so has L, I imagine.”

Roger nodded sadly. “A and B. Really all of them. The middle of the class did all right, in career terms, but it was a terrible blow to them, how insignificant they ended up being in the world. The bottom – circulating through the social system, mostly. As to Matt... he may be a full-blown miracle of mental health.”

Benedict shook his head. “Matt has ceased to accept challenge. He has begun always to take the downhill road, the road that will neither tax nor foster his talents. That is a quieter despair than murder or suicide, but despair it is.”

Dismay bloomed across Roger's face. He really never had seen it that way before.

“This, the best of the first generation. And so L, a formidable generalist who once expected his successors to do everything he can, has focused the curriculum solely on his niche. No more need to pilot airplanes or charm snakes. (I gather from the recorded outcome of last week's zoo barge affair that L _can _charm snakes?)” 

Roger lifted up his hands to indicate that he hadn't the slightest idea.

“The new philosophy of Wammy's House,” Benedict resumed. “So long as you know your place in the niche marked _detective_, you have a place in the world, rather than expecting the world to be a province of your self.”

“But you find fault with that,” said Roger, frowning.

Benedict smiled. “I am Ledroptha's twin brother. Privy to most of his gifts, having therefore had some taste of his temptations. I believe I  _ have  _ found my niche at this late stage of my life, but the remedy came much earlier, and is at once very difficult and exceedingly simple.”

“That being?”

“Disinterested love, Mr. Ruvie. Incidentally, don't be perturbed if I should hover closer to the belfry for a while. Number Two will now be communicating with S.Q. Pedalian three times a week.”

* * *

A cryptogram, marked lechiffre.txt, had appeared on the sanctum computers at the same time as the weekly case file. Reynie had written to Sticky for consultation, but this time the body of Wammy's House was well ahead of Her Majesty the Queen: either the file name was a reference to Ian Fleming, or, more probably, a reference to the nature of the cryptogram itself: the Vigenere cipher,  _ Le Chiffre Indechiffrable. _

It was an antiquated system, consisting of several monoalphabetic ciphers which alternated according to a set keyword. One careless repetition of a letter sequence at the wrong point left the Vigenere cipher vulnerable to swift mathematical destruction, but in this single short message, there was no such repetition. The only available key was the keyword itself, which would most likely be the name of the culprit.

Alas, the culprit was clear enough, but the most distinctive feature of the case was the protean nature of his identity. Only the sporadic photographs available offered a clue that it was a serial murder case and not simply a string of unrelated disappearances, but with them, the pattern emerged: he would charm a solitary benefactor, murder him, assume his identity, liquidate his assets, and resurface in a thoroughly different location under a thoroughly different name to begin the process again. If any of the identities anyone had uncovered proved to be a working key to the cipher, they weren't sharing the information.

But that Friday morning, they woke to find the television re-installed in the commons. The killer was speaking from an anchor's desk under yet another name, the dub-over (Japanese, oddly) not quite concealing his natural voice. He was claiming to be L – and plausibly, too; he looked and sounded more like Reynie's former idea of L than the real L ever did.

Most of the young ones, from Wiggin to Liliana, instinctively shrank back in horror. But Reynie, like Constance, had long since learned: when in doubt, look to Near and Mello. And their faces were not dismayed, but taut with expectation.

“Criminals around the world are being murdered by a serial killer. I consider this crime to be the most atrocious act of murder in history.” (And that was likely enough to be the man's honest opinion, wasn't it?) “I will not rest until the person or persons responsible are brought to justice. Kira, I will hunt you down. I will find you.”

The case file they had just read, and the case L had probably just undertaken. What were the odds?

And Kira. What would possess this man to draw Kira's attention to him?

_ Try to value your life,  _ L had said.

“Kira. I've got a pretty good idea what your motivation might be, and I can guess what you hope to achieve. However, what you're doing right now is evil.” He allowed himself a smirk. “You want utopia, Kira. Even if you succeed, you won't get it. But let's be clear: you won't succeed.”

But of course this was a criminal from L's case file. L had already apprehended this man, and it was hardly likely he would be free by now.

_ You'll know presently,  _ L had said.

Reynie knew what he was about to see perhaps five seconds before it happened. He turned away, but the death cry was clear enough.

The familiar letter L then filled the screen. L spoke entirely in voice-distorted Japanese, a language which Reynie had given only the most superficial study. Erving, the staff polyglot, stood by and interpreted, but Reynie would have to read a translated transcript later. All he caught, before Roger removed the DVD recording and wheeled the television back to its place of rest, was that Lind L. Tailor – for that really was the man's name – had been slated for execution the same day.

It was probably the best consolation possible at that juncture. But Reynie was shaken.

TAILOR did turn out to be the key word to the cipher. After adding spaces and punctuation, it read: “Brothers and sisters have I none, regardless of appetite or circadian rhythm. The true enemy is abroad. Study hard.”

It was agreed that L had not been so communicative since the beginning of the Detective Wars. Perhaps not even then: everyone who had studied at Wammy's when that crisis began was long graduated. But in any case, such behavior was reserved for the outset only. Once L formally began a case, it was  _ his _ , and his alone.

“You are bound to enjoy this week's eclectic exercise,” declared Benedict before the assembly hall that Monday. “Some students present are still bound to enjoy it in counterproductive ways, I grant, and the Christmas theme surely cannot help. But regardless, we must all enjoy this week's eclectic exercise at the _end _of this week. Events, as you have no doubt noticed, have somewhat overtaken us.”

Looks of mild dread and annoyance flitted about the assembly hall. It was one thing for the students, the successors, to discuss matters like Kira, but what business did mere instructors have to butt in?

“The debacles concerning the bomb in the bedpost, and my eldest daughter in Winchester, are dangerously illustrative. They show a preoccupation with _trappings –_ slouching and subterfuge and solitude – at the very time we find we must remember what lies at the heart of detection. 

“For instance: what qualities might L have had in mind the morning of the fifth, when he challenged Kira in the words _I am justice_?”

A tense silence descended over the room.

“I'm going to tell him,” announced Mello.

This pronouncement of Mello's did not, for once, create a deeper silence; instead, what reticence there was broke to bits like ice over swelling spring rapids.

“He already knows, Mello, it's a test--”

“If Saint Nick doesn't know, why spoil his precious--”

“No, you know what _was _a test?”

“And just why would he--”

“If it was a test the way _you _mean, then why were Near and Mello--”

“\--they were top of the listings then, too, you can't just assume it was--”

“Oh not this ridiculous debate _again_!” screamed Linda.

Benedict waved them down. “ _ Not _ a very illuminating discussion, I can see. Mello, I understand there is some matter of which you wish to inform me?”


	7. A Teleology of Detection

**A Teleology of Detection**

Reynie looked round to where Mello stood at the back of the hall.

“Well, there's this flaw in your assumptions,” he told Mr. Benedict, lifting a corner of his mouth. “You see, nearly two years ago now, L held a remote interview with Wammy's House and point-blank told us he didn't care one bit about justice. That he only liked to solve puzzles. So there's just one thing he could have meant by invoking the spirit of justice on live television, Nicholas. _Show. _But please, tell me more about the heart of detection.”

Nicholas frowned thoughtfully. “Hmm. I shall try. Mello, what if it were...” (Here he made an uncharacteristic pause, as though in a realm of discussion that was actually beyond his direct knowledge.) “...A cooking show. Would an appeal to justice lend greater dramatic force to the preparation of a crème brulee?”

Constance grinned into her hand. “No, but are you sure L wouldn't do it?”

“Well...” Benedict had to laugh for a moment. “Well, all the same, there are qualities that make the statement _I am justice _more appropriate to the pursuit of Kira than to... Bakery Hour or what-have-you. What might they be?”

Reynie found himself in sympathy with the mood of the room: wrong-footed, as though Mr. Benedict had deliberately changed the subject. He knew justice was more important than L's opinion of it, but still, L's opinion wasn't  _nothing._

Nonetheless, Wizard stepped up to answer the question at hand. “I hate to bring this up,” he said, “but there is one thing that actually makes it less appropriate. Retribution. That's a substantial part of justice.”

“But not the whole,” said Linda. “Otherwise the phrase _unjust punishment _would just be nonsense.”

“Did you miss all that retribution L promised to bring on Kira's head?” Mello told Wizard incredulously.

Zeta swiftly raised a finger. “Are you saying he _does _care about justice now, Mello?”

Mello shrugged a shoulder as though discouraging a stray fly from landing on it. “I'm saying he cares about payback.”

“For what?” Zeta was fast losing her composure. “Kira hasn't done anything to L, Kira hasn't even even cut into his _business, _it's a completely different sector of the criminal...”

“If L does care about justice,” said Near quietly, “then he doesn't care sufficiently not to violate justice by lying about it to the people he trusts best. And the reason that Mello and I were formally chosen as successors... the reason was that we already knew.”

Mello grinned in a predatory fashion. “Oh, Near, been meaning to ask: did you notice anything about Morello Market Research, back before Bonfire Night?”

“Yes,” said Near. “I noticed, as I'll presume you did, that it didn't crash down around Thierry Morello's ears. It simply sold out to a respectable buyer a month after the Petrash murder was closed... which doesn't seem very likely, does it.” Though Near had no regard for normal body language and did not deign to turn his head back at any point in this exposition, Reynie could hear a small smile in his voice. “You didn't think my answer would be no?”

“Actually, I didn't,” snapped Mello, then turned to the assembly as a whole. _“That's _why the case was unsolvable as long as Matt kept the censors up. The key consultation _was _with Morello, there is no alternative, but for some strange reason the transcript has been dropped even from L's own hard records. Oh, and since that business deal, it looks like Morello has been spending a _lot _less time with his family – while L has been talking his way into sensitive offices notably quicker than he used. That's just for an easy instance. It takes more patience and reasoning to aggregate, but he also maintains secret and illegal extraordinary rendition facilities in Ulster, New South Wales, Delaware, Honshu and Krasnoyarsk Krai. Keep an eye out. You'll see it.” 

He stared triumphantly in Zeta's direction.

“You all raised such a frightful fuss when L told us he was guilty of crimes. You still think deep down it couldn't be true? Well, I wasn't saying a word, because it _wasn't a surprise to me_. And L handed me a laurel crown.”

Yes. L had a ruthless side. After the demonstration with Lind L. Tailor, Reynie could not very well argue that. But it was difficult to conceive a more hazardous conversation in which to begin wrestling with the idea. Benedict had hoped that the person of L might be less than an inescapable orbit, but as it wasn't--

“Then you and Near are agreed,” said Reynie. “It was a test of discernment, _not _a test of apathy.”

“Well, yeah,” said Matt with an easy smile. “Mello _would_ fail tests of apathy, generally.”

“Good,” said Reynie. “Being a detective who doesn't care about justice at all is... well, that's a real liability. I can't imagine deciding to be a detective without caring.”

Mello's eyes narrowed in utter contempt. “And for what reason,” he asked Reynie, “would L lie to us?”

“He,” squeaked out Linda, to the amazement of all to whom she was actually audible.

“He... wouldn't, but...” She whirled her pencil furiously and stared directly into the vortex, and her voice became more level.

“L is... maybe the most intelligent person living. We should know. We're here, after all. We know we're smart, L certainly knows _he's _smart, and, well... cynicism is supposed to be intelligent. An intelligent person can be a very quick study at cynicism, too, and that's a lot like vindication. Don't you know the feeling?” 

Reynie found, with a squirm, that he did.

“And that's why he really believes he doesn't care about justice. He believes it, and he does things because he believes it, but deep down, he's lying to himself. Because this is _L. _He's smart enough that he could do practically anything. But what he does is solve crimes.”

Polaris rolled his eyes. “It's more of a challenge than driving a car or beating a few dozen bookish children at tennis, isn't it?"

Groans broke out like measles. No one wanted, at this late hour, to dredge up the question of L's ability to drive.

“Someone in Colorado just discovered a fifth state of matter,” said Wizard. “Isn't that something of a challenge? In the grand scheme of things, that took _millennia _to solve_. _No cold case can stack up to that.”

“What L likes is a _personal_ challenge,” said Mello.

“All right, Newton and Leibniz, then,” said Wizard impatiently. “Edison and Tesla, or, or starting a space race to the next Earth-like exoplanet. He might be starting something of that order _now_, but it's been a long time since he took on Eraldo Coil. Think of all the things he's just happened to learn along the way. Thirty-two languages. Seven programming languages at least. Snake-charming, I think. Brazilian martial dance – I mean, _dancing_, with _balance... _He can figure out anything. Why not... well, branch out?”

By the look on Mello's face, Wizard might as well have asked why the Earth spun on its axis, and he was far from the only one. Matt, on the other hand, seemed to think it a reasonable question. Magritte was not in Reynie's line of sight, but Reynie would bet a month's worth of back posture that she shared Matt's sentiment.

“Because he actually likes being a detective, even when it's _not _a big challenge for him,” said Constance, “So you should be glad, Mello, because you're going to be L if anyone besides L is. What a relief: you can be happy about justice even when the people you're chasing turn out to be pushover wimps.”

“I'll still feint them to within an inch of their miserable lives,” said Mello. “No sense getting complacent.”

That statement was itself a feint, Reynie realized: a tactical withdrawal from the main argument he had put forward in this assembly hall, back toward the main argument of his total career at Wammy's House. Mello had, in other words, tacitly admitted defeat.

Mr. Benedict saw it, too.

“Mello, I submit you have hit on another component of justice: the preciousness of truth. Applied here to the sphere of the master detective by the traditional accompanying bodyguard of lies. But more than that, all along you have been emphasizing a regard for real motives and circumstances – and think how foolish it would be to speak of justice without _that_. Who cares to bring forward a few other aspects?”

_Mercy _ was submitted, then amended, through further discussion, to  _proportion_ .  _Deference to legitimate authority, _ said Misfit, certainly with Kira rather than herself in mind.  _Defense of society_ was next, whereupon Mr. Benedict asked that they define  _society. _

It was at this point that the conversation began to flounder. First, someone thought of quality of life, which was then shunted into a tedious detour regarding what was the best alternative measure to the Gross Domestic Product and never quite got back to crime and punishment. A more fruitful tack seemed to be the security of liberties under English law, before Magritte said that surely places such as ancient Assyria that never knew English law had still had a _society, _and inadvertently threw the whole matter into chaos.

Reynie, meanwhile, could only think of his own Society. But could one really say that the very concept of justice existed so that Mr. Benedict could live in wildly eccentric harmony with three adopted daughters, three other families that he might as well have adopted, a circus strongman, a peregrine falcon, and a bomb-sniffing dog?

Perhaps. It had a right ring about it, somehow. But how was he to formulate it as an absolute?

After the natural death of a particularly futile leg of the discussion concerning the just defense of the society of the priests of Huitzilopchtli, Benedict waved a hand for silence.

“There we have the danger of abstractions,” he said. “At Wammy's, we have long since become experts in the disease of crime, but perhaps to the detriment of knowing what body it is that we are to defend. I have therefore proposed to Roger a certain expansion of the eclectic curriculum, to which he has graciously offered his support. From here on, each of you is to submit a study of the everyday life you observe while in Winchester over the weekend. Please feel encouraged to go out of your way to encounter such life – and, should your findings be difficult to quantify, do not feel overly obliged to do so.

“On a more pedestrian note, you may expect a very full Tuesday on the twenty-ninth. Come the New Year, I have arranged myself a brief absence.”

* * *

Perhaps because it had been so inadequately explained, the conversation some of Mello's cohort had that afternoon, backs slumped against the icy east wall, mainly dealt with Benedict's absence.

“Strain's getting to him,” Loom decided. “Saint Nicholas never was Wammy's material. One little scheduled absence... soon it'll be sick days, badly improvised lectures...”

Matt gave a nonchalant shrug coupled with an all-too-knowing smile.

“What?” asked Misfit tetchily. Mello's disfavor had made her parsimonious with her words.

“Reasonable assumption,” said Matt, casually lighting another match, “_if _you don't have a hook into Roger's database.”

The match had burnt out a minute before Loom finally gave in.

“So?”

“Analog and Flare are marked for the same absence... right after Kyle comes with the little trans-Atlantic jet on New Year's Eve.”

“Why the jet to begin with?” asked Loom. “New kid?”

Misfit made a scoffing sound out her nose. “Not  _now_ , there isn't. With L become such a household... alias?”

“I'll bet it's the day _Kyle _has his next vacation,” said Matt. “No mention of any delivery, new student, or new teacher. Strictly the aeroplane.”

“No need to deduce any more than that, mind,” said Loom. “Flare'll be happy enough to stay quiet and gloat, but as to getting information out of_ Analog..._ only ask and he'll tell you.”

Analog, it turned out, was not as forthcoming as Loom predicted. He dodged the question four different ways before anyone could be certain of the runaround, then, when called to account, simply refused to answer.

But that, in its way, was a highly informative answer. In bed, mulling over the little puzzle, Matt soon recalled Analog's pledge to the girl Kate in Southampton (oath-keeping – that was a clear aspect of justice here even though the law had nothing to do with it, but would it be just for L to keep his oath if a court decided not to execute Kira?) And that pledge proved the thing to crack it.Though other occasions for silence were to be allowed for – no,  _assumed _ to exist – the matter of Curtain proved a fruitful line of inquiry.

First, Ledroptha Curtain was imprisoned in Stonetown, the largest city in the US Mid-Atlantic region not to boast an airport of its own. Second, if one made the reasonable assumption that this visit was occasioned by the rise of Kira, then the photograph of him must be genuine, not simply a picture of Nicholas in sunglasses as Matt and Mello and even Near had always assumed. Therefore, he was Nicholas's twin brother after all. The incentive for a visit was obvious.

Lastly, Matt remembered: he also knew someone marked for death by Kira, someone who lived a short distance from one of the preeminent airports in the world.

In the end, three Wammy's orphans dug their false passports out of the nether recesses of their steam trunks, while Rhonda Kazembe (as designated chaperone) simply took her real one. Prison visitors would be subject to background checks, but then records would show these false identities had quietly abided in Hampshire for years. Yes, Mello had had a few police warnings, but the record for “Alyosha Koppel” knew nothing of it.

As for Matt's false passport, it simply read “Matt Wooster.” There was no question that B knew who was coming to visit when he gave them the all-clear.

The third volunteer for the visit was Linda.

“Why?” demanded Mello. “Matt knew him; I think I've _been _him at times. But what do _you_ care?”

Linda's eyes flicked toward a spot on the ceiling. “He's one of us. Isn't that enough?”

* * *

Beyond Birthday was a picture of ruined grandeur, defiant slouch and involuntary twitch, long full black hair straggling into his face and marred by the great pink burns creeping up the sides. His eyes fell on Matt and he straightened.

“Well, _there's _a face I haven't seen in a while. Fancy seeing you here. Here for the death watch?”

Linda sighed. “Don't be melodramatic, Beyond. You knew he was coming.”

“All right, what if I did?” B's shrug had something of a spasm in it. “Did you ever get to be Wammy's best and brightest, little Matty?” 

“He did,” said Mello, stepping forward. “But now that's me.”

“Proud of it, too,” muttered B, with obvious disgust. “_And_ obviously accustomed to going without shoes.”

He made an appraising sort of noise as he looked round at the other three.

“_Four_ orphans. Guess I made a bit of an impression on... on Rue after all.”

“You did,” said Linda. “Well, I'm only guessing about, er, Rue, but Mr. Wammy was devastated after you left, and since then...”

“I'll bet he was devastated,” said B. “Thought I was his ace in the hole. What maze is he having you rats run now?”

“They're called case files,” said Mello, incensed. “Ever done one before you got the bright idea of going up against L?” (Though B's status as L's onetime successor was a closely guarded secret, it was a matter of open record that L had been the one to catch him.)

“These are highly talented and discerning children,” said Rhonda, thereby refuting the spirit if not the letter of B's observation that she was one of four orphans visiting. “So, by all accounts, were you.”

B ignored this.

“Matt.” His sudden grin was all out of symmetry with his face, and it wasn't entirely down to the burns, either. “There's a reason I wanted you to come. Do you remember when I told you I was Merlin? Toward the end.”

“Huh, maybe,” said Matt, not particularly straining to think. “You said your fair share of strange things those last two months. Oh, we've got a Merlin from China now. No great shakes at discerning motives, but you should see him in the chemicals lab.”

B twitched in his eye and the corner of his mouth. He would not be sidetracked.

“Well, I was. I _was_ Merlin. The seer of all fates but my own, wouldn't be all burned up like this if I saw my own. But the rest. Anyone I've laid eyes on. I knew my parents were marked for death. I saw A's hour long before she did. And do you know what else? Hmm? Mello, do _you_ know?”

Mello's nostrils flared. “I suppose I'm coming to a sticky end?”

“Looks that way,” B assured him. “But that's _new_ data.” 

His eyes bored avidly into Mello's.

“Come on. You're talking to the LABB killer? The most valuable information you could possess is just within your grasp. Don't you want to ask?”

Mello clenched his jaw and said nothing. Rhonda laid a firm hand on his shoulder.

B laughed them to scorn. “Well, I'll tell you for free: it was all for nothing. Wammy's madhouse. An heir and a spare and spares to spare and all of them  _ wasting their lives _ .” He smirked. “Well, you come younger now. One of you  _ might _ have had a chance at being called from long retirement. Not you, Mello. But someone.”

The boys' faces were a bewildered struggle between shock and relief.

“Mello,” said Linda quietly. “I'm so sorry.”

“Oh, chin up,” drawled B. “And learn to parse tenses: I _was _Merlin. Not anymore, boys and girls. Look out the cell door and see the old rules thrown out the window, twitching on the ground. A man with thirty years to live has a heart attack at lunch. Common lot. And not just that – the man two doors down, he's a zero, a dead man walking, I see his face and I know he should not be alive but there he is, up and about and full of nervous twitches as ever. Where Kira is concerned, all bets are off... and if I were Kira, you _would _be in my area of concern, I do think.”

“Of course we would,” said Rhonda, stonily looking toward B rather than his guard. “Kira's area of concern seems to extend quite a long way.”

Linda nodded sharply, then forcefully propelled herself from the bench where she sat. “Do you realize what you've really told us, B?”

“Apart from what I _told you?_” said B. “Have your guess. It's all third-tier Wammy fodder is good for.”

“All that dark secret knowledge you were just trying to impress us with is off the slate. The butterfly effect of Kira – that's got to be like Mothra beating his wings over the Pacific. Supposing your Merlin complex is anything more than talk... we're back to exactly where we were. Ignorant of our destinies, doing the best we can regardless. And your best, B... I mean, you're right. We're here because you're probably going to die soon.” Linda looked into his eyes. “Is this how you want to go out? Just accruing as much spite in the bank as you can manage? That _would _be a tale told by an idiot.”

“Signifying...” B pretended to think. “Oh, yes. Signifying that _fate itself is breaking down_. Nothing to be concerned about, especially not if you're spitting straight into the wind of Mothra's wings. Oh, no, don't be upset to see _me _go... as though you are. There's no finer chair to die in than a front-row seat on the death of the world.”

Linda turned her face away, eyes shut tight.

Near was soon badgered with questions of whom he might visit in prison, given the chance.

“Whatever the penal system does isn't within my control,” he said to Reynie a few days after Christmas, idly toggling a Guess Who board refitted with custom cartoons. “I don't really see the point.”

Reynie's eyes fell on one of the cartoons: an effeminately handsome man with dark hair to his shoulders.

He then noticed the man just to the right bore the gaunt, dead-eyed features of Kuro Otaharada. And that one, in the black blazer...

“Haley Belle,” he said quietly. The leader of the twelve FBI agents Kira had murdered in Tokyo the day before yesterday.

Near began to twist at his hair.

“All the victims who've made front pages worldwide. _Without _duplicates on the opposite. It represents only a small fraction of the deaths, but this board alone makes Kira the most prolific serial killer in the history of the world.”

Reynie stood silently a moment over the forty-eight cartoons standing like red- and blue-rimmed tombstones.

“That's not in our control either,” he said at last. “But it matters. Thanks.”

Ledroptha had been astute in this much: crisis really _did_ have a galvanizing effect. The past month had seen the Winchester orphans rise to Benedict's challenges as the first three would never have given him cause to hope.

Last week, Misfit had actually managed to solve a puzzle where half the clues rested with Zeta. The week before that, Matt, inspired by a young woman picking up litter on a major street, had issued a veritable amateur treatise on public versus private forms of justice. Magritte, only the past Sunday, had actually tracked down a vandal and charmed him into a friendly confession... which was a matter for private commendation only, lest the object of observing ordinary life be forgotten (or, as he told Magritte, lest Winchester begin to attract undue interest as a hotbed of junior detectives.)

Chiefly, the galvanization had taken place within the walls of Wammy's House only. But then, the Society had no need to be galvanized. The Society was like a swimming hole in summer: one chance falling-in, and it was as though you never once left.

“Actually,” Reynie was telling Kate as they walked into the parking area of Stonetown Prison, “I'm getting used to _Analog._ In fact, you can be the Great Weather Machine if you want.”

Kate made a face.

“Don't tell me you don't want to be called that any more?”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she said in ringing showman tones, “we are now pleased to present the Great! Weather! MACHINE!”

Constance nodded judiciously. “Great  _Kate _ Weather Machine. That one syllable makes all the difference.”

“So it does,” said Reynie gloomily.

“When she's practicing her new way of getting about on the road,” said Milligan, mussing Reynie's hair, “she can go as the Charcoal Blur and never have occasion for introductions. All equable.”

Number Two raised a hand to her mouth. “That is a remarkable case, were one needed, for Kate _never to do that again._”

Kate's toothy smile expressed a perfect intent to ignore this injunction.

“A sizable time window probably obtains before her name could be any factor,” pointed out Sticky. “After all, we will be visiting a known serial kidnapper momentarily.”

With that, a pall fell over the gathering. None present had not spent some degree of time as Ledroptha Curtain's involuntary guests – and all, in the second month of Kira, had seen fit to cross an ocean in order to pay him a cordial visit.

On entrance, they were subjected to the customary search – in yesterday's call, S.Q. had still been complaining of the number of steps, and S.Q. had a point – then entered the familiarly ugly green lobby where Mr. Benedict signed his entrance. The clerk behind the plexiglas at the desk was uncommonly dull-eyed and harried even by the standards of her post, but then Benedict had not been thinking of the current standard.

They settled into aluminum chairs with uneven legs (except Constance, who used the floor), and, against their better will, let the sickly dullness of the place slowly filter into their spirits (except Constance, who played with imaginary objects in a predatorially avid manner that only Benedict and Reynie could recognize for what it was: a caricature impression of Near in the game room.)

At long last, the desk clerk called in dishwater tones: “I want Nicholas Benedict to the front?”

The party of seven stood.

“I only want Nicholas Benedict at this time, please,” said the clerk, with a dragging sigh.

Benedict stepped forward. Number Two reflexively moved to accompany him before remembering herself.

The clerk slipped him an envelope marked with his name under the plexiglas, muttering “thank you for your patience and have a good day.”

He looked toward his empty seat past six faces trying in turn not to look at him, and made certain to avail himself of it before opening the letter.

_Dear brother,_

_I don't imagine you can restrain yourself from a visit much longer. Whatever has been keeping you occupied of late, so far from Stonetown, you must prove yourself ungoatish in the end, mustn't you? _

_But still less do I imagine that Kira will long refrain from visiting my cell. In him I recognize my own, and that recognition galls my throat until I drowse of it. Do I flatter myself that the compliment will be returned? I think not. If you have received this letter through the ordinary channels, then that dark fancy has become a certainty._

_He has no great plan of worldly guidance. It is laughable and obvious, now I see the matter replayed in a mind outside my own. He simply believes he was born to rule, that he knows who belongs in the world and who does not, and the rest will simply work out well of its own accord. It must. It will be under his great auspice. And he will brook no competitor for the crown._

_Even now I ponder some last revenge, each mode rendered impossible by circumstance and short notice. The best, I think, would have been to extend to you my design for that mechanism you dismantled without ever fully understanding. It would have been a noble cause for its use, would it not? But I was too shrewd to be incarcerated, too shrewd to keep the plans anywhere but my own infallible brain. I was ninety-one, and imagined myself immortal, and now have no channel remaining whereby to transmit any legacy to the outside world._

_I am forced, then, to leave the mode of revenge to you. Oh, an ugly word, I know. Call it what you like, so long as it enables you to act. Even my memory is worth a good deal to you, I am sure,_

_With final regard,  
_ _Ledroptha Curtain, Esq._

It was a letter filled with little glimmers of understanding, buried forever in the mud of obstinacy. It was a letter of repentance stillborn.

Benedict put it aside and buried his face in his hands.

He felt Number Two's bony fingers bracing his shoulder. “Dead?”

He gave some jerk of his head that might have communicated a nod.

“I wish,” he croaked, “oh, I only wish I would _sleep._”


End file.
